The Press Box - Biden’s Media Cheat Sheet, “Gotcha” Questions for Giannis, and Farewell to Jerry Springer

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Bryan and David break down Biden’s reelection announcement and press conference cheat sheet and weigh in on the type of “Rose Garden” campaign he could be running (13:10). Then, they highlight some key takeaways from the White House Correspondents' Association dinner hosted by Roy Wood Jr. (29:40) before addressing Giannis’s response to the media when asked what he thought about the season (35:24). Later, they bid farewell to beloved talk show host Jerry Springer (44:55). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listen now. David? Yes. Do you watch a little NFL draft this weekend? I watched a lot of NFL draft for, you know, on the David Shoemaker scale. Yeah. How about some draft TV notes to get us going to do it? All right.

Draft starts Thursday night in prime time. Yeah. With the star-spangled banner and a military flyover. This was a military forward NFL draft for sure. There's a debate. about whether every sporting event in America should start with the Star-Spangled Banner? Is there even a debate about whether the draft

should need that to commence every year? It seems a little bit strange. Just a little bit? But I'm not sure. Are there rules about when the Star-Spangled Banner should be used? Like the way you can fold the flag and whatever? Like, are there guidelines?

No, it's like the Boy Scouts, where you bury a flag when it's been damaged. No, I don't think that's written down anywhere that the draft from Kansas City must have an anthem to begin. I think we could just start it if we went to. Like if we had an all-hands ringer creative meeting, would it be appropriate to begin with the Star-Spangled Banner? Only if we all have to sing it in unison, I think. You also texted me, I believe this was day three. Yes, it was day three.

That Roger Goodell came out and kind of business casual. Business casual is giving it, I'm not saying too much credit. This was not, it was like, this was, this was, I got back from vacation and came straight to the office sort of look. Very casual. This is not what we grew up with is business casual where you could like leave your tie at home. I was thinking after you sent me that text that the pandemic draft might have been the height of the draft in terms of production. Mm-hmm. Because it stripped away all the anthems and the jet flyovers and the big stadiums and we just,

had a thing where we picked players by Zoom call. Mm-hmm. And Bill Belichick was sitting in his kitchen table and it was fine. No green room to worry about people waiting too long in. We need more business casual at the draft. I don't know. I don't have any problem with what he was wearing. I think it was more of an expression of my own personal anxiety,

which is if I were him in that position, I would be backstage saying, I just have to go out there for 30 seconds to kick this thing off, to do a little military tribute, like whatever. What should I wear? What should I wear? And for me, the answer is always, if I have a suit and no one will question the suit, you wear the suit, right? Like, I'm not going to wear a suit to, like, coach my kid's soccer game.

That would be odd, but I will dress as nicely as I can for that occasion for fear that I'm going to get it wrong if I go in the other direction. So it's like, nobody would have cared. Roger Goodell could wear a suit to go to the ice cream shop. Nobody would bad nigh. So it's a real choice to go out in something so much less dressy. But you know what? He rocked it.

It was great. Certainly put a sense of day three over the whole proceedings, you know. It's not worried too much. Clearly the commissioner is not that worried. I kind of want you to become the Tom Landry of youth soccer. Wear a suit. If it's a tweed jacket and a hat, yeah, I think I could probably pull that off. I do.

So I don't know if you've, I know that you've had some, some, some, uh, little league baseball practice and you, and we probably are pretty similar because you did stats. I have generally like one to three kids that I'm rotating in over the course of the game,

my entire obligation. I mean, I spend the entire game just with a little notebook in my hand and a pin figuring out my next substitution. And so, because it's like every five minutes, I got to yank two people out and put two people in. That's it.

That's it. all my brain can manage. Another thought from the draft. This was in front office sports. Mel Kuiper Jr. should be in the writer's wing of the pro football Hall of Fame. That seems much less controversial than the Star Spangled Banner. I think so too, partly because those awards, if we're being honest, is often for length of service as much as the greatest writer broadcaster of all time.

and Mel's been on TV for 40 years now. But I also think if we're talking about the most imitated sports writers in America. Influential for sure. I mean, Mel is, Mel might have snuck in at the top five. Yeah. I wouldn't have said that 20 years ago. But look at Twitter on Draft Weekend. There's a mini-Mell and there's a mini-Mell and there's a mini-Mell and they may say,

hey, I'm modeling myself after Dane Brugler or whomever. but he created a job in sports writing that is now a very, very stacked category and seemingly getting bigger all the time. Well, I mean, the entire presentation, the entire existence at this level of the NFL draft, I think, can be attributed to the work that he did, right? I mean, when he was putting out those first Kuiper guides,

like nobody, like they were for like 45 people. You know, he didn't just create the job. he created the audience, you know, and now it's like, could you imagine, could you imagine texting one of your uncle's being like, hey, the Cowboys drafted Mazzie Smith, and they were just like, never heard of them, don't care, you know? Like, no, everybody that's invested in the team has,

like, at least a dense paragraph's worth of knowledge on anybody that they're going to take, you know? And that's thanks to the work that Mel Kuyper sort of pioneered. That's how you, when I was one of those 45 people who got the Kuiper guide in 1993, I remember seeing those at your house in high school. I desperately wanted it, one of those cool royal blue guides. This was pre-internet as we know it.

So I found out he was coming on a local sports talk radio show when I was at school. So on my way out the door, I put a cassette tape. This sounds like stories my grandfather told. I put a cassette tape into the radio and push record. so that it would catch this segment that was going to happen while I was at school, came home, rewound the tape, got Mel's 800 number, and called it to get the guy. That actually happened. That, in and of itself, should get him into the Hall of Fame.

The legacy of you trying to get that guide. Yeah, that's really incredible. One last note on the draft. I have long made peace with the draft being an infomercial for the NFL. I'm okay with that. But something really weird

has happened with fans at the draft where when any player is picked in any round, ESPN cuts to the fans and they are jumping up and down and celebrating hysterically into the camera. Yeah.

Now this is a problem, David, because that's not how human beings process the NFL draft. The NFL draft is about anguish, elation, and everything in between where you call that uncle you referred to and they go, okay, I'm okay with Mazi Smith. It is not like, yes, yes. Oh, my God, this is absolutely incredible. Nobody acts like that. With the exception of like 10 picks in the whole draft.

They're probably getting coached, right, by whoever is standing next to the cameraman. So give him a break. But I was watching, was it a Lions pick? I forgot what it was. And there was a sort of middle-aged guy who was fully decked out in all the gear. And he was just cheering, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they announced the pick.

And he took a beat to kind of look downward away from the screen to process the name of the pick. And then we're right back to the same totally detached, rah, rah, rah. like screaming and I was just trying to imagine so he definitely didn't know who the player was like this wasn't day one I was trying to imagine what the beat was for like is he just making sure that the team didn't like trade the pick for cash or that like I don't know like one of history's greatest monsters was picked in that spot or something like I just I would really love to interview that guy and see what he was thinking in that moment there were so many like that yeah I was watching in the third round and the Patriots drafted Marte Mapu linebacker Sacramento State. Now, I looked this guy up. He was actually a person that those mini-mills were in on, Marte Mapu. You cannot tell me the group of Patriot fans at the draft were like, yes, yes, Marte Mapu. Got him.

Absolutely who I wanted in the third round. Yes. Yes. it's really funny because this strikes me is what the NFL thinks good TV is versus what television producers think good TV is right you know when they shoot the stands during the Cowboys home game the fans aren't going crazy if the Cowboys just fumbled or if the Cowboys ran for three yards on first down yeah there's a variety of reactions so we need to go back to the 90s

the 80s when the draft was at the Marriott Marquis in New York and only weirdo jet fan showed up. They would boo. They could be mad or just kind of non-plus. Like, who's that? I don't know. I heard of that person. Maybe they'll be good. Okay. Too much excitement.

No, it is. It's too much. But, yeah, the draft is all about the upside. Right? Yes. But it's also all about new jerk reaction. See, you're talking like the NFL, Mr. Gidell. It's all about the future. It's about the journey. No, it's not. It's about the fans being like, hey, that was a reach.

We got that guy two rounds later. They should just have, for the live audience, they should just have instant draft grades, or better yet, like a meter, like one of those, you know, where you do the hammer thing at the side show or it's like, see how high the thing goes. They say Marte Mapu, and it just shows with, you know, graded on the curve of the pick number or whatever, like how good of a pick this was. And the fans are watching it tick up and up and up it up slower and slower. And then it caps out like a like a C plus. And they're just like, oh, we couldn't have done better than that.

That would be great. That was that was Mazi Smith on my text threats. Let me tell you. Can I ask you a Mazi Smith? Can I ask you a Mazzis Smith question? Sure. So I'm being interviewed. I'm sorry.

I forgot by who after the pick. He'd already talked to obviously the Dallas people or whatever. And they asked him about his his seeming deficiency and, attacking the quarterback. He's just a run stopper, and it sort of, the attribute list stops there. And the person interviewing him said,

is that something you need to work on? And he was like, yeah, and it's something that the Cowboys' coaching staff believes that I can do. But there is a brief pause, and I wonder, in a moment like that,

is the player worrying about going off script? Is the player worrying about saying something about the coaching staff that maybe they didn't actually say? or is it just PR or is PR? You say what you got to say in front of the camera. Probably the latter. Yeah.

It's a good question. It seemed very well coached for, you know, the interview. So that's positive. Yeah, you wonder how much has been related to Mazzis Smith in that couple of hours or one day between them picking him and him actually going in front of the cameras. But fascinating question. Coming up on today's podcast, David, Joe Biden is running for reelection. Sort of. We discussed the president's media.

cheat sheet and the funniest bits from the White House correspondence dinner. In NBA notes, we talk about a Q&A with Janice and offer some new words for midsection. Plus, a final thought on the talk show host who always left us with one, Jerry Springer. All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, Erica Servantis, with you here. David, let's begin with this week in 2020.

because we got some big news. Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign last Tuesday with an estimated 50,000 cheering fans in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. Just kidding. Biden put a video on Twitter. Here's what Biden said to make the Krasenstein brothers chant four more years.

When I ran for president four years ago, I said we're in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. The question we're facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be, and I think you do too. This is not a time to be complacent. That's why I'm running for re-election.

Now, if that announcement seemed a tad low-key, it's a preview of things to come. Here's Politico's Jonathan Martin speaking on ABCs this week about what kind of of campaign Biden is going to run. But it's remarkable that he put out a video, gives a speech that nobody really pays attention to later that day. And that's the entirety of his reelection for a city president. But that's what we're in here. It's going to be a Rose Garden campaign to put it mildly.

And the idea of sort of him engaging in the hurly burly of the campaign is just never going to happen. He's going to be low-key, avoid the press, and try to keep the focus on Trump and the geopolitics. So my question is, can Joe Biden win with a Rose Garden campaign in 2024? God, I don't have a good answer for this. I think that it, listen, it does seem like going back to the last time Trump and Biden ran against each other, that an enormous amount of this contest is sort of baked in, right? to the point of almost a feeling of predestination.

Or, you know, so does a Rose Garden campaign, is that going to be functionally different than, you know, barn burning, whatever, whistle stop campaign? I mean, I like how you were searching for the 19th century word there. Just going to reach into my bundle of tricks here and see what I can come up. with the soapbox um

so yeah i mean i i understand the question um and i do think that a lot of a lot of i do think a lot of the action from the biden campaign is going to be reaction a sort of measured um uh you know serious statement through a through a slight grin sort of uh commentary on whatever his opponent does um so, you know, and frankly, you know, marshalling the, the, the platform of sitting president has been proven to be helpful time and time again.

I think it can work. I just don't think that, I think that I bristle at the, at the notion of free determination or whatever and, and, you know, would probably say that no plan, you can't make, you can't make any plan now that's going to be the definitive way forward, unless it's totally bi-act. accident. No, it's true. And you could see a scenario where his poll numbers look bad at some point or, you know, semi bad and he has to do something else, right? He has to go out in the stump a lot more than he wants to. He has to engage day to day with Trump a lot more than he wants to. Yeah. But I think his message is going to be very, very similar. 2020, Joe Biden said, I am not Trump. 24, Joe Biden's message is, I am still not Trump.

And if you watch the video that he put out, you know, he talks about overturning elections, banning books, eliminating a woman's right to choose. Another video, cutting social security, MAGA extremists.

We're hitting these notes, but at a more basic level, it's the reason you named him the Kobe stopper. His whole political talent, his whole political cell is around, I can beat Trump. Yeah. And now it's, I can beat Trump because I did it once

before. Mm-hmm. Which I guess is at least slightly different. Yeah, I mean, if you're going to, if you're going to base your campaign around predestination or in this case, inevitability, that's the right card to be playing. And we're going to do, yeah, we're going to do this again. Okay, let's do it again. Mm-hmm. I guess when we talk about, about that. The only thing I noticed

a lot of us thought Joe Biden was going to win the 2020 election by many more states than he actually did. And it wasn't going to be a relatively narrow victory if he did have some cushion in the electoral college.

Yeah, I think that it'll, that I think that this is going to be a very, very intriguing election for just micro-targeting. I think that, you know, there's going to be a I think we talked about this before, but, you know, it feels like there's going to be about 1,500 people spread out in two states

that are going to be deciding this election, you know? And their lives are going to be fucking miserable for the next couple years. Are they going to be in those CNN panels? We're constantly asking how you feel that week. They just deliver their ballots directly there. Most of the media aspect of Biden running for re-election because

it strikes me that the media had to put it very mildly. a lot of doubts about Joe Biden 2020 in the Democratic primary. You would have had to look pretty hard to find reporters that thought he was going to win the nomination early in that campaign. Yeah. Before South Carolina, before things obviously started going his way. Then he runs a basement campaign during the pandemic. There were also a lot of doubts about that strategy.

Remember those articles that would come out and a lot of Democrats are questioning this, David Axelrod. co-wrote a New York Times editorial being like, are we sure this is a good idea? Yeah. To just kind of not campaign. So I feel 2024 is going to have this shadow of the media having been wrong about Biden tactically once before. And the way they're trying to process this is through that lens. They'll still question him.

I don't think I think you could go find a lot of reporters right now that think maybe, you know, would bet that Biden doesn't win reelection. somehow Trump wins or DeSantis or somebody else. But I think everything they write about him is going to be through that idea of we were wrong about this last time. And how do you think that's going to pan out? I don't know. I don't know. I don't think Biden knows how that's going to pan out.

It's a really interesting question because the age issue was a real issue. It's now even more of an issue because he's older. Your normal human reaction would be to say, well, I think what we learned four years ago is it age doesn't matter. Well, now he's four years older, you know? I mean, so is Trump. He's four years older, and he's not popular. Maris poll that was done right before his announcement, 41% approved, 50% disapproved,

which is about what Trump's approved, disapproved numbers were when he started running for re-election in 2019, according to Maris. Think about that for a second. But then you read down the poll, and you find this sentence. Overall, 64% of U.S. adults said they do not want to see Trump become president again. So I'm not Trump.

Still not Trump. Still not Trump. Not me. I'm the Kobe Stopper. I was fascinated by the story this week of the Biden press conference cheat sheet. I don't know if you saw this. Biden was doing a presser in the Rose Garden, speaking of Rose Gardens, with the South Korean president. Listen to the first question a reporter asks during this media event. Thank you, Mr. President. Your top economic priority has been to build up U.S. domestic manufacturing in competition with China.

But your rules against expanding chip manufacturing in China is hurting South Korean companies that rely heavily on Beijing. Are you damaging a key ally in the competition with China to help your domestic politics ahead of the election? Okay, China and chip manufacturing, right? Mm-hmm. Well, a photographer took a picture of a piece of paper Biden was holding in his hand. The piece of paper said, question number one.

It had the name Courtney Subramanian, the LA Times reporter who in fact asked that first question. It had a picture of the reporter. And then the cheat sheet had a preview of what the White House thought the question was going to be. Yeah. This was all on the piece of paper. paper. But as Paul Farhey writes in the Washington Post, for many years, White House press office employees have routinely polled reporters about their priorities and interests in advance of news meetings to anticipate what their boss might be asked while on the podium.

Dot, dot, dot. Every White House press office will try to go around and take the temperature of reporters, said a veteran White House reporter, who, as for anonymity in this article, they want to look smart in preparing their boss for what we'll throw at them. Dot, dot, dot, dot. But in their advanced conversations, reporters rarely offer anything as specific as Subramanian's topic. The typical answer is News of the Day, which leaves the options for questioning the president open.

You don't want to give away your question, said the veteran reporter. It's incredibly bad form to do that. So this is interesting, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Joe Biden has a cheat sheet that has at least. some notion of what question he's going to be asked. Yeah. And in what order he's going to call on reporters.

What do you make of that? I guess I don't have like a major issue with it if it's like pre-established. If they were just sort of announced that in the fine print up front or something. I mean, I do think there's this the fine print to get into the White House press office? No, no, no, like when it's like airing on C-SPAN or whatever. I think Joe Biden knows this question was coming, knew this question was coming. Listen, I think that there's a tension here. On the one hand, are we interested in our president speaking off the cuff?

Are we, is it sort of like a quiz? Or are we interested in, like, having, like, the best answer to the questions? I mean, obviously, for a press conference, implicitly, they're kind of speaking off the cuff or they're speaking in real human terms and not from a script, whether or not they know what's going to be asked of them. But also, it's like, the point of, if you're a news reporter and you say, what do you think about, you know, what do you think about this microchip policy or whatever?

You want the answer, right? And not like your president to be like, I don't know. Or like, if I recall correctly from the meeting and then say something incorrect, right? I mean, you're not, or, you know, the right answer with a gaff on the way there. I mean, certainly like the gaffe would get a lot more attention, probably get a lot more engagement online.

but the presumption is that you're looking for the answer to a question that you're asking, right? Like the correct answer. So I assume as a reporter, you'd be grateful that you're getting the answer. Now, there is an element of this, obviously a huge element of sort of the president's mental fitness and felicity with ideas

and engagement with the broad scope of his policy and everything else. Yeah, I mean, nobody's particularly interested in hearing the president say, I'll get back to you on that, right? So, you know, I don't know. I kind of feel like I don't, first of all, I wish I had note cards with the faces and the names and the something they might say to me for my kid's soccer team. That would be super helpful for everyone on the players.

And just about for everything else in life. But yeah, I mean, whatever. Like, it feels gross. I'm not quite sure, like, morally what my problem is with it. But it feels a little bit icky that they'd be doing it. but at the same time, it's like, yeah, just say what you're doing up front, you know? And, well, I think everybody will just sort of follow along. Your point about gaff hunting is really good.

I'd say the problem with it, and Farhi talks about this in the article, is that what if they look at the list of topics and say, oh, well, we don't want to answer that question. So we're not going to call on that reporter. Oh, well, you're right. That's a really good point. Because then you look at it and you just be like, well, never call on that guy because he's asking stuff about and questions about things we don't want to talk about right now. Right. And this way, it seems like we were available to the press, but we actually just answered the questions that we thought would be most helpful to us. Yeah.

Yeah, that's so good. But your point about actually wanting an answer, like what is the administration's policy in some detail? And apparently Biden's answer was actually quite long and detailed much more than you would think he would be able to talk about chip. chip manufacturing off the top of his head. Yeah. The other caveat here is Subramanian apparently asked a different question than the one that was on the cheat sheet, it was slightly different anyway and had said that semi-conductors were merely one of the topic she might ask about at the press conference.

So it was not exactly like, you know, she is saying a scripted question that I have on this thing. It was more of a topic. Right. Farhi also says, what if reporters don't. honor what they said they were going to ask. So what if you're like, let's go over here. I understand you have a question about chip manufacturing.

You're like, actually, I want to ask about a hundred Biden's laptop. Yeah. Speaking of chips. Or just 30 seconds on chip manufacturing, followed by Baba Booie, Baba Booie. Yeah.

You could, I guess, you know, do a right turn there. Yeah. No, I think that that's, I mean, I don't know. that's an interesting one because you would think in any other segment of polite society that would just be like, okay, well, you did it and now you can't come back. Now you're not going to be invited again, but that really does, you know, it's not like you were under any sort of

legal obligation to, to preview your, the question for the president. And what if something else occurred to you? But I do go back to what you said about mental acuity, especially with Biden at 80 years old. You should probably, we should probably get a fairly regular and in Biden's case not nearly regular enough you know a couple of minutes more than a couple of minutes of him at the podium answering questions

so we can see how he's doing and where he is I'd say that with any president yeah I mean that's sort of part of the job and part of the job should be talking about your administration's policies if not in hyper hyper hyper specificity off the top of your head you should sort of know

this stuff. Yeah. I do like the reporters who are like, what are you going to ask about? I don't know, news of the day. It could be. What did you think of Janus and the bucks losing in the first round? That feels like you're at like some like local municipal office and you're like trying to get you to your bathroom remodel. And it says like, oh, it says description of property. Just put a news of the day. It'll go fine. It's like just the thing that you figure out you can write in that somehow will be accepted. None of your business seems like a fine answer to me if they're asking, what are you going to ask. Finally for you, David, this week in

2024, Roy Wood Jr. What we know as a daily show correspondent was the comedian at the correspondence dinner, the White House Correspondence Dinner. He was an interesting choice because his dad, he said this in his speech, covered Vietnam, various wars in Africa.

As a reporter, was a radio pioneer. His mom was involved in the civil rights movement. Talked a lot about that. This is how Wood introduced himself to the crowd of media and political luminaries at the beginning of his speech. I'm well aware that not everybody in this room knows who I am, so let's just address the elephant in the room. I know what it is. Half this room think I'm Keenan Thompson.

Other half think I'm Louis Armstrong. President Biden thinks I'm the daddy. Your family matters. What are the odds that Joe Biden understood a family matters joke? you don't think he'd be like do you mean Reginald Vald Johnson one of America's greatest treasures there's no chance

no there's no chance Joe Biden knows what Family Matters is Joe Biden's in a Family Matters demo he was home on weekday nights watching sitcoms with the rest of us wasn't he Friday Friday nights he got home got off the Amtrak in Delaware

Was it exclusively Friday I feel like it moved around a little bit But you can imagine that right long week in the Senate, got off the train, put his feet up, cracked a cold beer and watched step by step and family members and family matters in full house. I don't think he had any idea. He was smiling during that joke, by the way.

As you might imagine, David Tucker Carlson's name also came up. Scandals have been devouring careers this year. The untouchable, Tucker Carlson is out of a job. Yeah. Okay. some people celebrate it but to Tucker's staff

I want you to know that I know what you're feeling I work at the Daily Show so I too have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake news program that got kind of a laugh and then an uncomfortable half laugh because everybody was like are we supposed to laugh

at a media person getting the hook at the correspondence dinner even if it's Tucker it's an interesting position everyone found themselves in where like Tucker would have been an easy Target had he still been employed. But now, he's getting paid

though. He's getting paid out, right? On that same note, Wood got into the Fox Dominion lawsuit. That's all I have to say about that, because I'm not going to have dominion on my ass. I love to me. Matter of fact, let me just say it right now, my favorite voting

machine is Dominion voting machines. When I go to the polls, I make sure it is a Dominion machine. that I use. If your election need the truth, put dominion in your booth. By the way, all night, whoever was doing this for C-SPAN had some amazing reaction shots, including of the Fox News table where both Ducey's were seated and often not laughing at the jokes.

The NFL or ESPN needs to hire this guy or gal for the NFL draft. this is how you do a reaction shot it's not all cheering what's the younger docy's name Peter wait after Peter was the dad oh no Steve's the dad

Steve and Peter Ducey all right The two doosies The deuce of Ducey's Is is That would be great if Peter was cracking up And Steve was not You know

He looks over and looks at his dad And then realizes he shouldn't I think Steve was looking at his phone In one of the cutaways I saw finally David this last line didn't get a huge laugh because it was a little too close to home for the journal's in attendance but I thought this was pretty funny all the essential fair and nuanced reporting is all stuck behind a paywall people can't afford rent people can't afford food not healthy food they can't afford an education they damn show can't afford to pay for the truth same as you want about a conspiracy theory but at least it's affordable he's not wrong He's not wrong.

Coming up in 30 seconds, did a reporter cross a red line when he asked a question to sad Janus? But first, David, let's do the overworked 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. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. This week's runner up, anybody who reacted to talk show host Jerry Springer's death by saying, I hope they don't throw chairs in heaven. Thanks to Lee Frank for that one. And this week's winner, quarterback Stetson Bennett the fourth, two-time national champion with the Georgia Bulldogs, went in the fourth round of the draft to the Rams.

Stetson Bennett will be turning 26 years old during this season. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Stetson Bennett is going to be a great mentor for Matthew Stafford. Thanks to Stephen Roderick, if you thought quarterbacks are getting almost as old as presidential candidates, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook,

Dump, David, let's do a quick NBA segment. We're going to be doing these for another month and change now. So I think maybe we should, we need a name. Can we call them the NBA today, except it's with a two, like the number two? All right, it sounds good to me. All right, here we go.

The NBA Today. I mentioned the Milwaukee Bucks number one seeds in the Eastern Conference they lost to the 8th seed the Miami Heat it's only happened four times in NBA history tough locker room

or shall we say podium to approach as a reporter well Eric Neem the Bucks beat writer for the athletic asked this question to Janus Patentacumpo I just asked Bud

the exact same question but I'm curious for you do you view this season as a failure anything wrong with that question in your eyes? Nope, but I'm guessing certain team owners might not agree. Yeah, Mark Cuban called it a gotcha question in a tweet. When I saw that, I'm like, do I understand the definition of a gotcha question? You're trying to trap Janus into saying something there?

Yeah. You were overwhelming favorites in the series. You're one of the favorites to win the NBA title. because you've been awesome all year and you lost in the first round. Is this a failure in your eyes? Seems pretty straightforward to me. Here's part of Janus's answer.

You asked me the same question last year, Eric. Okay. Do you get a promotion every year on your job? No, right? So every year you work is a failure. Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work towards something,

towards a goal, right? Which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, to be able, I don't know, provide the house for them or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal. It's not a failure. It's steps to success.

You know, and if you've never, I don't know, I don't want to make it personal. So, there's always steps to it. You know, Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championship. The other nine years was a failure. That's what you're telling me.

Fascinating answer. because he clearly did not love the framing of the question, but then is trying to explain himself at some length. Here's why I don't see the season like that. You asked me that last year, let me take a shot out of here, and this is why I don't see it like that. What's funny to me about this is this seems like a pretty ideal

post-game interaction between reporter and player. Yeah. Porter asked exactly what he wanted. Player said exactly what he wanted at some length and felt comfortable in taking issue with the framing of the question. And you look at this on Twitter and everybody just kind of loses their minds in one way or the other. Uh-huh. First of all, because people put this up like, Yonis didn't like this question and already, you know, you're immediately setting people up on Twitter. Like, uh-oh.

Yeah. I didn't like it. well guess what but you don't like questions all the time yeah people you're interviewing don't like questions all the time that's not the point it's also not very remarkable that they wouldn't like a question especially right after they just lost a game

yeah who cares who gives a shit well it also got a really good answer that's what I mean and even if the question even if the answer was taking exception on some level to the question that's he got the answer I know and it just it feels like

what's happened is we've had this weird melding of aggregators who want to pull these things. Also, the fact they're on TV at all. And then this kind of stand culture that's like, yeah, Yonah showed it to the reporter. Like, none of those things happen. Reporter asked a question. Yonis answered the question at some length. Well, it also shows, I think, one of the problems that we come back to a lot, which is Mark Cuban or whoever is responding. Like, on some level, Mark Cuban is responding to the aggregation.

as if the aggregation is one and the same with the reporter asking the question. True. And that is not based in reality. But he's trying to give a journalism lecture about this on Twitter. Yeah. Don't ask gotcha questions.

Don't ask questions that are about basketball. I'm sorry. That's a completely fair question. It's a completely fair question. By the way, I want to empower everybody in this scenario. I want to empower the reporter. I want to empower the player to answer and then I want to empower people like you and me to look at Janice's answer and be like,

are you serious? Yeah. You don't think Michael Jordan thought it was a failure when he didn't win the NBA finals? I'm sorry. Did you check out the last dance? Yeah. Is this really, you really, I understand you as a locker room presence and you as a face of this franchise and you as also an athlete who is having this conversation with yourself all season and all career long

to keep yourself in the right mind frame about success and what's happening next and stuff. Really? Yeah. It's not a failure. You don't think of it that way, even for a minute? Yeah. I empower us to have that conversation, too. I empower everybody.

This is how it's supposed to work. A couple more for you here. Nick's Heat series in round two started Sunday. He took game one. That conversation we had about how every mediocre movie from long ago eventually becomes a quote unquote cult classic. Oh yeah, for sure. Have we turned 90s heat Nix into a cult classic? I thought you were going to ask of like every 90s playoff matchup that occurred more than once.

Okay, maybe so. But Nick's heat 100%. Yes. We're talking about it like it's Lakers Celtics. It's like a high point of the NBA. It's like, man, it doesn't get any better than neat. I'm sure there are other examples. I guess like Lakers,

the Lakers kings and the Lakers blazers briefly during that era. Yeah. But man, in the East, that was the only like recurring playoff matchup. And it seemed like for a few years, there was only, they were definitely going to meet every time. And there just aren't many other examples of matchups that are like memorable for that whole generation, our generation, you know? So, of course, it has some meat, but, yeah, I mean, what did that really?

It's not Celtics Lakers, right? This isn't the NBA finals. This is a thing that we remember because a coach got flung around like a, like a, I don't even know, like an ankle weight, you know, like falling half off your foot while you're trying to run down the stairs. It was funny, you know. I don't know if we're going to get back to that, that, those heights. this time.

But it's fun to remember. I got a midsection update for you. Oh, yes. Talk last week about announcers struggling to find the right PG-rated term when players are hitting the you know where. Yeah. Well, it happened again, David. Hawks Celtics, game six.

Oops. Two more seconds on the shot clock. 11 on the timer. 19 seconds left in regulation. Young had nowhere to throw it, boy, threw it right into the groin. Can we send it on? TV. Wasn't his intention.

Listener Jason Friedman says that the No Dunks podcast calls this getting hit in the Hibberts. Named after the time Shane Batti got Roy Hibbert in the Hibberts. Jay Adams

says the Men and Blazers pod calls us getting hit in the down below's. Okay. In the down below's. John McKay, a listener, tweets this at us. Hi, Brian.

Being hit in the midsection is an ever-present concern for cricket batters. When a radio commentator in England mentioned someone has been hit amid ships, the listener knows exactly the level of discomfort being felt, being hit there by a rock-hard cricket ball. Amid ships. I think any like three-syllable words spoken with a British accent in their right moment could identify that part of the body for me. It's really funny.

Not sure it's going to catch on here quite in the same way, but I like it. Brian McKenna, I think has the winner. He says NBA announcers should call it the restricted area. Pretty good. That's funny, but I think that the previous examples did show that the plural is important, right? Because singular, you know, there's two different things that we could be talking about there. And the, you know, the plural evokes a certain thing. I, yeah.

All right. Message to Ion Eagle, Kevin Harlan, anyone else listening, it's getting hit amid ships. Take it from us. No, we'll go with the restricted area. Let's just go with it. I like a midship's better. Finally, David, we lost talk show host Jerry Springer. Last week, he died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 79.

I was thinking back to when you and I were in college the only things I can remember watching on television were Jerry, Monday Night Raw and sports. I'd given up sitcoms. I hadn't discovered the Sopranos. I got nothing. I mean, that was all I watched on television. Oh, man. I think it's all we watched on television. What else? God, I don't know. See?

There were sitcoms for a while. I'm sure we were still watching some of that stuff. I wasn't. This is pre-lost. Lost wasn't on. I have no recollection. And important for this conversation, it's pre-at-least what we know is the reality TV explosion. Oh, yes. The real world was on, but none of the other stuff. Survivor's just about to start, right? So,

Jerry is also kind of this portal into, hey, it's real people doing real things on television and we're all smiling and laughing and having whatever reaction. How about the Howard Stern's e-show? Was that? Okay, that was probably in the rotation. Didn't watch that as much. Yeah, no, Jerry Springer occupied a very singular place

in not just our lives, but the sort of public imagination. It was, I mean, that show was just monolithic, you know? I mean, it was, it's absolutely crazy. I talked about this a little bit on my other podcast. because Jerry has a kind of years-long relationship with WWE, the pro wrestling world. But more specifically, I was talking about it because of the value of the Jerry Springer show in terms of a sort of public awakening to the unreality of television. You know, now the place that I always go when I'm talking about this is the Kardashian shows, right?

It's just like, you can't watch keeping up with the Kardashians and then say, God, you know, wrestling's fake, right? That stuff, you know, because, like, we're all sort of implicitly aware that the stuff that goes on in so much reality TV is staged, right? It might be based in reality, but so could, you know, so is most music and theater or movie, you know, whatever. But Springer was weirdly that, too, because we all came out of this, like, generation of Donahue and even, you know. Oprah. Sally, Jesse, Raphael, Oprah's old stuff. You know,

there's so much stuff. Where even though it was like hammy and like overwrought and deliberately like trying to, to, you know, bring up topics that were a little bit seedy

or a kooky or whatever else, there was the implication. I mean, we all watched it as if it was news, right? And then Jerry came along and I think I said this on my last,

on my other show, I said, you know, by the time you get to like the 15th pimp who wants to, you know, reconcile with his lover brother or like whatever, you're just like, wait a second. How many of these could there really be out there? Right? And then you're just like, oh, what I'm watching for the subject matter? I'm watching for the fights that come afterwards.

And then, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You become aware. The matrix. You get red-pilled or whatever. The fight where Jerry is crossing his arms and kind of looking. disappointed at everything that's happening on his stage, even though that's exactly what he's set up to happen? Yes, exactly.

Whatever it takes in life to have you be totally immune to the fact that a vicious brawl, weaponized vicious brawl is happening like 10 feet away from you. It's a pretty impressive place to be. It's the sort of anti-Jef Van Gundy in a way. While there's a brawl, you're either hanging on to the ankle or you're either hanging on to the ankle or you're just standing there bemused. Well, that's what Steve Wilco's is for. Yeah.

You're not letting the brawl get to you. He's breaking that thing up before it's too big. Too big. I was watching clips over the weekend. I was amazed at how many Jerry Springer episodes devolve into two people together on one side of the stage, usually making out. And a third person on the other side of the stage

trying to get at them and being held back. That was kind of a go-to for the show. Also, Jerry would throw it to a commercial and say, we'll be back, and then there'd be a standing ovation. Remember everyone in the crowd? Oh, this was the absolute peak of just crowd excitement. You know, I mean, there was, like,

Arsenio Hall had a really exciting crowd way back in the day. Obviously, there were moments of pro wrestling and pro sports of, like, whatever, where they're actually at their peak. But, man, if you showed up for the Jerry Springer, audience at the peak. You were, you were, you were, it was like going to the gladiator show in the arena or whatever. You were just there for the, you were the NFL draft, as we pointed out earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love your idea about unreality. Yeah. Being foisted on American. It's an American sort of figuring this idea out that these things could be real, but also packaged

and heightened for your enjoyment. Let me add. another one. Late 90s. The internet is coming. But it's also the end of where there was a certain kind of propriety enforced by television. Yeah. You could only go so far on TV in those days. And if you went any farther, you got bleeped. Oh, yeah. Or something was grainy, you know, mask was put over the TV. So you couldn't see what was happening. Well, and even that was a huge departure from just a few years before where that the, the graininess, if it wasn't air, live, the bleeping and the blurring would have never made it to air. Totally.

Jerry is pushing that bar as far as he can. This was old TV propriety. This is 90s TV propriety. But there still is such a thing as propriety. Because you remember there was a video called Jerry Springer Too Hot for TV. I was going to say, that's how you know it was before the internet, right? Because that video existed on VHS form exclusively, I believe. There might have been a DVD.

But this whole idea of. Here are the things that happen on show that we cannot show you on television. Now that would just be television. Talking about the way he pushed the boundaries, the pro wrestling parallel is k-fayb. Like, Jerry had to pretend like this was all serious news coverage. Because if he had been in there just in like a bullfighter outfit, just reveling in it, I don't think it would have flown.

I don't think it would have been okay. You had to sort of pretend that this was the same thing. as as, you know, Geraldo from his, his daytime talk show. I love that. That was the serious. Well,

Donahue, Phil Donah, already said Donahue and Sally Jesse, but whatever, like, whatever the serious, I thought you were going to say Walter Kronkai,

but you went to, he had to pretend it was Geraldo. Yeah, you had to pretend it was a serious news show and you were talking about something serious or else, you know, you kind of blew it all up.

Also, also the closing thought, right? The sort of like wrap up on the, on the, the mass man show, I wondered if that was deliberate as a way of sort of pushing back against what they thought the response to his show would be.

Was that a canny move to sort of be like, like, hey, FCC, look at this nice thing I'm doing. Yeah, I think even on a more basic level, it makes the viewer feel less icky about what they just watched. Oh, that's true. Because here's counselor Jerry, who is taking a lesson from what we've seen. seen today and then take care of yourself and each other. I'm really here just to bring people together, not here to get people to fight on my stage. So it kind of cleanses you from the whole experience. Other thought I had was every Sleas master in American life eventually becomes a grand old man of Slease. Respect it. Oh, remember the days when that happened? This happened to

Hugh Heffner. Yeah. This happened to Vince McMahon, at least before. news of the recent settlements. It happened to Oprah. When that show was seen in a certain way, and then eventually everybody was like, Oprah, can you please run against Trump so that we can retake the White House? Remember that idea was actually out there for a while?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely happened to Jerry. Jerry was on Dancing with the Stars. Jerry was kind of a, you know, it's like, oh, only in America. Yeah. An American success story. He made himself.

I wanted to play some audio. One of the all-time, most known, most gawked at Jerry's segments was called I Married a Horse. Yeah. I'm sure you've seen. It's most seen because it's the most relatable, right? We've all been there. Here is Jerry explaining to Meredith Vieira, the genesis of I Married a horse. I'm not allowed to know what the show's about.

So they hand me a card like yours, which I carry, but all my card has under the name of the guests because I didn't know that. I never knew that. Oh yeah. And then I'm supposed to ask questions that you would ask sitting at home watching and then make jokes. But I never know what the subject is. So on this particular show, we got this guy Bob sitting there.

I'll say Bob, I don't remember what his name was. Bob, what's going on? That's always my first question. And he says, well, I'm having trouble with the neighbors. What's the problem? Well, they don't like my wife. What's wrong with your wife? No, you know, I don't know.

She doesn't make any noise. She doesn't talk to anyone. So this is going nowhere. So I figure, oh, this is boring. I look at the next name on the list, and it says pixel. Well, let's bring out pixel. And out comes this horse. I would love for that to be the way that episode unfolded that Jerry did not know a horse was coming out.

But as you say, packaged reality. Rest in power, Jerry Springer. All right, it's time for everybody's favorite sleazy segment. It's time for David Shoemaker guests, the strained pump. headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline

about the Russian team's exclusion from Olympic basketball was nothing but yet. Today's headline comes

from the caseman. It's from NPR. Retail giant Bed, Bath, and Beyond has now filed

for bankruptcy, NPR reports. Plans to begin closing its 360 bed, Bath, and Beyond stores and 120

buy-bye baby stores. A vision of this chain survival is bleak. All right, David, bed, bath, and beyond is no more. What was NPR's strained pun headline? God, I feel like I saw enough of these that I should just be able to bring them back. Recall something. Bed bath and be gone.

It's almost like we were like, see you in hell, bed bath and beyond. Bed bath and It's going to a better place, David. Bed bath and the Great Beyond? Bed Bath and the Great Beyond. Oh, wow. I remember an earlier round of headlines about bed bath and beyond

money problems that was called Bloodbath and Beyond. Oh, that's good. That was funny. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantis. I'm back Wednesday with Press Box Final Edition.

and then Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, Dave. See you later, Brian.