The Press Box - Coronavirus Commercials, Justin Amash, and Listener Mail | The Press Box

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the commercials that have touched on the pandemic, including, but not limited to, Pizza Hut, Walmart, and State Farm (2:55). Then, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (22:20), new presidential nominee Justin Amash (25:20), and finally, listener mail (35:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Once again, that's the ringer.com slash WCK. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. We got lots and lots of great stuff to get to today, David. How about we talk about new presidential candidate Justin Amash? Hey, is there a lane for a libertarian in this thing? We'll also answer your listener mail, including the question, how could Jesse the Body Ventura affect the presidential race?

Plus, David guesses a strain pun headline. He's shaking his head at that thought. and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, we got to start with a very curious phenomenon of the coronavirus. By that I mean the coronavirus TV commercial. This is not about the virus itself. It's about a brand and it's about a brand being sensitive to the virus. A brand telling us that we're all in this together, David,

and you can be in this together by ordering McDonald's or buying batteries or whatever it is. I want to start here. You know how sometimes when you visit a small town newspaper, you get that little multi-question survey you have to get through to actually get to the article? I got one yesterday. The survey was about brands and it asked me to select all the statements I agree with. Let me give you some of the statements I was offered. My favorite brands are providing me comfort.

healthcare workers are today's true heroes. I'm okay with my data being used to help others, and the world will be forever changed by this. I feel like I'm getting some mixed messages there, right? My fear of the deadly coronavirus is being used to help me love brands and give away my data at the same time. I don't feel those thoughts are all exactly in sync. Anyway, that's what's sort of happening writ large.

our fear, our need for food that we don't cook at home is being repurposed in a TV commercial. Let's start with State Farm Insurance. Take this in and tell me what strikes you about this at. For now, we're all living a new normal. Businesses are closing. Living rooms are now offices in schools. Our world is suddenly different, but one thing stays the same. State Farm is there.

to any of our customers currently facing financial burdens. Call your State Farm agent because we're here to help make this new normal feel just a little more normal. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. I just want to point out that, by the way, that before I read, before I knew anything about this segment, I just made like three notes before we started doing this podcast. and my one note about this topic was, was this flow chart. Our longstanding value arrow,

the virus situation, arrow, our longstanding value means something slightly different, but our mission is the same. That's like this is, I'd like to give a big shout out to State Farm for really just falling directly into the definition that I've laid out ahead of time

without having any idea we're going to be talking about them. Um, this is, it's, it's like a funny joke and then you sit down and watch TV for like a four hour block or you or it's, and it's, it's like, the interesting thing about the commercials now is it's not just like a specific channel. It's not a targeted audience. It's not a specific. It's not just over. It's not just a regular cable service. It's, it's, it's, it's your Hulu. It's your YouTube. Everything else is barraging you with these same commercials that are all saying the exact same thing, which is we understand, uh, but don't forget about it. us. And by the way, thank you to insurance companies for feeling, for caring about me. Thank you particularly to my car insurance company for cutting my my rates this month or where all this stuff is going on. But you see what a real, uh, highly successful company does in a time of stress like this, which is just lay off half the staff. If your reaction is we're just going to give some of our money back, that is, you're so far even like above and beyond even like the corrupt businesses that are, that are firing people. I mean, it's hard to believe that anyone on at State Farm

can even get infected by the virus when they're sitting on such a tall stack of our money. But, you know, congratulations to them for feeling it for us right now. It's kind of like branding, branding the stay-at-home portion of this, right? We are all staying home brought to you by State Farm. You know, kind of like a football game.

Oh, that's a great way to put it, yeah. That's all they want to do, right? It's not so much as selling a product that they definitely would not mind if you call State Farm and buy something, but it's just kind of putting our logo there in the corner of the screen. This is another approach.

This commercial comes from Verizon. Kind of hard to get into a phone store now and get your data plan changed. But David, I want you to listen to the music here and to the service Verizon is offering at this very difficult time. My name is Jonathan and I work for Verizon. I totally get how important it is to stay connected. We're connecting with people. We're offering them solutions. Customers can do what they need to do whenever they need to do it online.

Because it gives customers the ability. to not come into the store. They can simply tap and swipe. Something that they can use wherever they are. We care about keeping you safe. At Verizon, we are here and we are ready. We are open 24-7 online, so you can keep managing all you need from home

and through the Verizon apps and Verizon.com. Wait, is the message there that our intelligent phones are helping us get through this crisis by allowing us to pass the time? Well, they're connecting us with people. is I think the word you're groping for that might have been mentioned prominently

a couple of times in that ad. Right. Yeah, well, we're all connected now. I think my favorite claim was the website is open 24-7. I believe the website worked before the coronavirus, right? You could get on the web

in the middle of the night. But it's not like we're offering something. We're just, if you have a problem, feel free to get online. It's really not much of an offer, right? That's kind of the normal offer. They're here. They're here for you. They're connecting. And as we'll see, putting this all in the mouth of people who work at the stores, who are, I think, sympathetic figures in this time of pandemic, of layoffs and those kinds of things, right? Of brick and mortar stores being closed. That's going to become a strategy going forward. Let's not forget about those people, right? We want to, this isn't the big corporation telling you something. This is the nice guy at the phone store when you bring in your phone. He goes, oh, I can fix that. Just give me a second, right? Pizza delivery, David. big thing during the coronavirus.

It's kind of like the kind of need for pizza we normally have during the Super Bowl. That's happening almost every day during this. Vox noted that during this year's Super Bowl, Domino's Pizza had an ad that was based on the movie Risky Business, a guy dancing around in his underwear, and then the pizza come to the door,

and the delivery guy is Curtis Armstrong, who was actually in Risky Business. Well, there's a new contactless delivery Domino's ad that was recut that eliminated the delivery guy. Right? Essentially, we don't want to remind you that someone is coming to

another human is coming to your door. We just want to remind you that you can order pizza. Everybody's so scared of seeing people, we just cut the delivery guy up. Now that pizza is not going to be brought to you by a drone. There will be an actual pizza man or pizza woman coming to your door. But he's not in the commercial.

He got cut. Why can't it be brought to us by a drone? Why aren't the people out there protesting drone rights or drone, the drone laws that are at there prohibiting the drones from bringing us our pizzas? Yeah, well, that's something we can talk about on a future episode. Cutting out the delivery guys, kind of the implicit message about safety via Vox's Meredith Haggery, there's also an explicit message about pizza safety. I bring you a commercial from Papa Johns.

At Papa Johns, we want you to know that from our 450 degree oven to box to you. It's our policy that your pizza has never touched once it comes out of the oven. And we're taking extra steps like no contact delivery to ensure it. Your pizza will never be touched once it comes out of the oven. See, I think that ad accidentally discourages me from ordering pizza. Go on. I think if you had a pig, if you showed me a picture of a piping hot pizza and didn't mention, you know, any of the possible disease vectors or human touching that could go on,

which is pretty low from everything I've read, you know, about order, about food. But if you, if you just didn't tell me that at all, I'd be like, ooh,

pizza, that sounds like a great idea tonight. Now, if you just explicitly come out and say, we will not touch this pizza after it comes out of the oven. Then I'm like, oh, wait, is there something I'm supposed to be worried about here?

Yes. Oh, my God, we promise not to taste your pizza between the oven and the box. That's it. Unlike our normal, unlike our normal procedure. I also couldn't help but think. Remember in the 80s

when we were growing up how all these companies would bring out their CEO in a commercial? The 80s was kind of the age of the heroic CEO. So like Lee Iacocca would do like a Chrysler ad and stuff like that. Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's? Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, there's a good one. Do you regret that Papa John has been canceled so that he cannot craft a Papa John's commercial

that he's the star of and try to assure us during this time of national difficulty? I mean, is there any doubt that Papa John would be leading a protest if he was still in that commercial, if he were able to make his own commercials? No. I mean, you mean he's like holding a shutdown, the shutdown sign kind of thing? Yes. Yeah.

He wants to deliver us the rights of our founding fathers. In 30 minutes or less. So we've seen the safety commercial. here's one that doesn't touch on that. It touches more on the idea that you are living a sad and unimaginative indoor life, particularly when it comes to food. And this company, Pizza Hut, can help. If you're over mac and cheese and PB&Js, have we got good news for you? Right now, get Pizza Hut's best delivery deal.

Large pizzas with up to three toppings for just $9.99. available for carryout or contactless delivery at pisa hut.com. I do like any ad that says if you're tired of a cheap product covered in melted cheese, have we got an alternative for you? Oh my God. Pizza. Pizza. P.B. and Js, I understand.

Because there's been a lot of that in the Curtis household. I don't know about the Shoemaker household. Yeah. The PB and Js have been like a, I've rediscovered my love for PBNJs during this during this situation though. I haven't quite gotten to the other side where I hate where I just resent their existence yet. But I'm fully,

I'm 100% like NBA player like PB&J consumption volume right now. It's fantastic. My particular one is just a ham and cheese sandwich. Which I was always willing to eat but never really excited to eat. Yes. And don't you get so excited when it gets like right around noon and you can go like just prepare yourself with mayo, mustard, whatever you want, just a ham and cheese sandwich.

Oh my God, it's so good. It's so good. Like, like anything, any just staple of your childhood that didn't come in a casserole dish, or maybe that did come in a casserole dish, just tastes so good right now. I was going to say, don't rule out those casseroles because I've been eating a bunch of those too.

Number of commercials, David, have been canceled as a result of the coronavirus. The LA Times reports that a survey by the Association of National Advertisers found that 92% of marketers had adjusted their messages since mid-March. The go-getter careerist in a commercial has swapped his crisp dress shirt

for a crisp t-shirt. For kitchen table, Skype calls with his loved ones, the paper writes. There was a particularly funny, and I can't play it because it's just all music, but there was this Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial that was airing earlier this year where everyone was licking their face.

fingers while eating chicken and one person even offered their finger to another person to lick. That's not on TV anymore. That may never be on TV again. Oh, my God. That's actually how coronavirus was introduced to the United States. A lot of people don't know that, but it was the filming of that KFC commercial. According to Vanity Fair's Jane Borden, the brands getting the most attention as the pandemic drags on are doing something different.

They're selling nothing. In these ads, soaring music accompanies pictures and videos, much of them generated remotely of empty cities, hands touching hands through plates of glass, and or essential workers wearing masks before the spot ends with words of support. Someone at a marketing firm tells Borden, they're not doing hard advertising per se. They're just saying, hey, look, we're a brand and we care. Speaking of which, here's Walmart. Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain.

We all have soul. But if we are wise, we know it's to my boyfriend. Who cares money? Somebody. I hope this was like a thunderdome. situation where if you sang well enough, you got the week off, you didn't actually have to come in and subject yourself to potentially contracting the coronavirus. No, I got to tell you, when we first saw this commercial in my household, we were, we were

momentarily touched and then just sort of like all simultaneously laughing by the end of it. The singing was fantastic. So Walmart has some incredible, some incredible pipes amongst its, uh, millions and millions of employees. but yeah. I mean, I can't imagine. This was like the scene in a Michael Bay movie where he goes to slow motion and people start hanging American flags out the window and you're just like, I know what you're doing to me right now, but I'm still going to get choked up.

Yeah, exactly, right? You can't help but get caught up. Also, we just lost Bill Withers this month, right? Yeah. So the song is kind of itself a tribute. But yeah, what you can't see there is that Walmart is doing something very brandy, which is they are taking this song and having it be sung by a Walmart associate, someone who works in the pharmacy, a case order filler, a.k.a. real working people. So whatever mixed feelings you and I might have about Walmart,

gosh, I like those people, right? I want those people to have a job when all this ends. So in a way it sort of disarms the part of your brain that might be suspicious of corporate America. And kind of, It kind of says, wow, Walmart, that sounds like a friendly place, you know, where people are breaking into song to get us through this national pandemic or worldwide pandemic.

Yeah. I would go to, I would, if I had to, if there were a super store where the employees actually did break into song, that, I would go, I would drive 20 minutes out of the way to go to that store. Yeah. Are they, are they singing through a mask? Is that what's happening now? Well, there weren't very many masks in that commercial, were there?

I didn't. It seemed a little bit. They weren't actually in the, yeah, but they weren't. actually like five feet from you as you walked in. What has happened to the Walmart greeter? Has someone done that piece? Oh, I have no idea. Because remember there'd be that person often a little bit of an older person there near

the door just telling you hi when you walked into Walmart or checking your receipt on the way out? Is that person still around? Maybe they have a bubble or something. It was probably inevitable, David, at a tasteful interval that we were going to get the coronavirus commercial with humor, the same kind of humor that we had pre-virus. Listen to this ad from Burger King. And just know this, the characters in the ad are saluting you, like giving you a crisp military-style salute while this happens.

Your country needs you to stay on your couch and order in. Do your part and we'll do ours. Order through the Burger King app and the delivery fees are on us. So staying home doesn't just make us all safer. It makes you a couch patatrient. And to help healthcare heroes, we are donating Whopper sandwiches to nurses. And we are also proudly supporting the American Nurses Foundation. Stay home of the Whopper.

That's actually the full Michael Bay treatment. Yeah, that's fantastic work. You can save America by staying home and ordering Burger King. Stay home of the Whopper. they're fully refitted but it's that exact kind of humor that's not actually funny but it's kind of commercial funny

yeah you know like when I had the Super Bowl and like all those football writers are writing about how funny the commercials are and it's like only you old dude thought that was actually funny that like a talking squirrel was behind the wheel of a car or something like that right Burger King did the coronavirus version of that which is pretty

ballsy on one level right we we think this will play during a time when 60,000 people have died. Be a couch patriot and stay home and order your Burger King, your Burger King sandwich. I think the final category here, and I don't even really have any sound for this because it's more soaring music than anything else.

But did you see the Uber Ann? No. It starts with people doing stay at home things. You know, given a guy a beard trim, kids riding on roller skates inside the house. somebody who's pregnant. And then it says Uber, stay home for everyone who can't. Thank you for not riding with Uber. So thank you for not using it.

So with Burger King, right, you are saving America. You're saving the planet by ordering Burger King. With Uber, you're saving the planet by not riding with Uber. By not calling the car. Oh, my God. Well, I mean, I guess there's some truth to that. I just, it's so,

so befuddling. I guess for a lot of people, Uber's a necessity. So I'm glad that they're out there just saying something, but I can't quite tell what the point is. That's the whole thing,

right? Is this sort of a need to say something? Yeah. Even if you don't really have anything to say. Yeah, it's like a support group meeting where someone's just like, all right,

Brian, your turn to talk and you're just obligated to stand up and just say how your week's gone. I'll leave you with this on that survey that I got from the local news website.

First of all, it made me answer 10 questions. This was question number 10 out of 10. So by this point, I'm already pretty worn down, right? I swear to you, this is the actual question. When you think about what's meaningful to you when you choose particular brands, is it more meaningful to you that a brand understands my frustrations or B, a brand provides me with dreams? Now, whoever thinks those are the two things that brands do to people are the people who wrote those commercials.

Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for a brand, if you're looking for a commercial to provide your dreams, is that what it said? Provides me with dreams. A brand provides me with dreams. Unless they're talking about those like coronavirus nightmares that everybody's having right now. I mean, if a brand could provide me with something to dream about,

that's not like me falling off a cliff with my family, then yeah, then I would like a brand to provide me that dream. But a dream in life, I don't, I don't know. I don't think that's where I'm looking right now. You would tell me you and your family really wanted to go to the Longhorn Steakhouse. Do you think the Longhorn Steakhouse understands your frustration or provides you with dreams? I think the employees of the Longhorn Steakhouse almost certainly understand my frustrations right now.

I'm not sure about the people in the Longhorn Steakhouse corporate office, wherever that may be. Their answer to the awesome blossom does probably provide you with dreams. All right, 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. nominees to at the press box pod. David, remember the Houston Astros cheating scandal where they were banging on trash cans? Does that seem like nine million years ago? God, yes. It seems like forever ago.

A scout on the 2017 World Championship team has put his World Series ring up for auction. The proceeds going to a coronavirus related charity. One problem, the Astros said they have a contract where if you sell your World Series, ring, you have to allow the team to buy it back for $1. Okay. I guess that's to prevent the secondary market for World Series rings. So $1. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write bang for buck.

And banging trash cans. Thanks to Dan Lust. David, I totally miss this one from the NFL draft. But remember that very palatial, very modern home that Arizona Cardinals coach, Cliff Kingsbury was in. Of course. It was an overwork Twitter. joke to write, Cliff should carefully check if anything is amiss in his basement.

Apparently we're going to do parasite jokes for a while. Thanks to Charles Swan for that. Finally, David, I love this one. A quote from TMZ Sports Kendall Jenner takes quarantine road trip with NBA star Devin Booker. Oh, God.

Kendall Jenner takes quarantine road trip with NBA star Devin Booker. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. We should have known Ben Simmons wouldn't make it work. from long distance. Thanks to J.M. Junkins. If you know how to provide content

to every Ringer NBA writer and us, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. David, let's talk about Justin Amos for president. But first, this message from the Ringer. Hey, it's Bill Simmons.

I wanted to tell you about a new podcast on the Ringer podcast network that we are launching this week. It's called TV concierge. It's only available on Spotify. these are 12 to 15-minute mini-podcasts that review the latest TV shows streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, FX, Apple TV, wherever else. We'll preview new shows that are launching.

We'll break down the biggest shows that just launched. We'll review the biggest binge-watch seasons that drop as they happen. On Monday, we're launching three of these, all mini-pods. You can listen to one. You can listen to all three. It's up to you. It's our new TV concierge podcast from the Ringer Podcast Network. or think of it like a little bit of a playlist.

Pick and choose the ones you want to listen to. It's available only on Spotify. All right, David, in the notebook dump. I want us to size up the potential presidential campaign, the exploratory campaign of Justin Amash, independent libertarian congressman from Michigan. On Tuesday, he announced he's launching an exploratory committee to run for the Libertarian Party nomination.

Here's why Amos thinks his candidacy makes sense. I'm asking you, there doesn't seem to be a lot of people who are lined up with where you stand on these issues. Actually, I think you're making the case for the candidacy. There are millions of Americans who aren't represented by either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, who aren't represented by the Republicans or the Democrats. And those millions of Americans deserve a choice on the ballot. And it's pretty silly to say, well, we shouldn't allow another candidate to be on the ballot. but we just want to have these two candidates.

And in fact, the way we got Donald Trump is because every Republican who didn't like Donald Trump was told insistently, they were told, you must vote for Donald Trump because he's the Republican nominee and you have to vote for the Republican. Similarly, people are being told today on the Democratic side, you have to vote for Joe Biden

and Republicans are being told you have to vote for Donald Trump again. That's not the way the system is supposed to work. We're supposed to have a system where the people are represented and there are millions and millions of people. would say the plurality of Americans who are not well represented by either of these two parties or either of these two candidates and they deserve an opportunity to vote for someone that they

want to win. Well, I have to tell you, I watched that interview live and it was every bit as sort of grading at the time. I don't know quite what to make of this. I think that the most interesting part of the whole, of the case candidacy is, well, there's a couple of things. One, I think that if coronavirus didn't exist, if we weren't in the situation, I think that we would still be kind of, we would kind of be identifying, the dotted line between all the kind of political moves and stances Justin Amash has made over the past, well, four years, but particularly the past couple, and this candidate, and this, this, you know, fledgling candidacy. I think in the, with the existence of the virus, I think it's even more clear, right?

I mean, this almost feels like he's got a coupon for the Texas Roadhouse, and he's just damned if he's not going to be able to cash it in, no matter what kind of quarantine is in place. But more interesting than that, and I guess this fits more for a media angle, is watching, I was watching the, you heard it right there, the host on MSNBC and other channels too, was on CNN, on Fox, kind of feeling the liberty to wrestle with the morality of his decision to float this candidacy in real time.

NBC, I mean, MSNBC opened up the data with Claire McCaskill out there just, just tisking with the force of a tsunami, Justin Amash's choice to even suggest that he might run. And it seems like every interview, every mention of it as the day went on was sort of like, why would you, like, look around the world. Why are you doing this to us right now? See, that I don't understand. I mean, on the one hand, everything he said about having another choice is sort of generic third party rhetoric that could have mostly come out of the mouth of like Ross Perot.

And there's really nothing, you know, why should people have to vote for the Republican or vote for the Democrat? You know, shouldn't they deserve a certain the people really get to decide like, okay. You know, that doesn't sound very original. But on the other hand, he's running for the Libertarian Party nomination, right? That's going to exist whether Amos runs her president or not. So is he supposed to just pick like a better time to go on a big tour of it? of MSNBC and talk to Chuck Todd and all these other people.

Like, what is that? How does that make any sense? You know? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of things that play. I mean, I get what you're saying. I do. I just feel like, well, for what I think from a television newscaster's point of view,

there's a little bit more gravity to what they're doing on an hourly basis, a daily basis now than maybe there was six months ago. And there was a time, and I'm sure in the absence of an international epidemic, there would probably be this time right now where they'd be excited by the distraction that a potential Amash candidacy would provide at least for the, you know, five minutes of every of every hour block or whatever. But, you know, I think that from a, if you're looking around the world and you're dealing with this like heavy, real stuff all the time and not just this horse racy shit. And also, I think there's a certain built-in exhaustion from the race that we've

seen so far, where you sort of like, you know, we had 45. of Democratic candidates on stage for way too long at every debate. And we've, we're kind of, we've cycled through all the sort of single issue candidacies or vanity candidacies, you know, like we're under the real race now. We're under the real, the real matchup. And that Justin Amash would just like come in only floating this idea now, I think just evokes a certain level of exhaustion from the people who are, you know, tasked with reporting it. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could argue that the presidential race really isn't happening at all. Yeah. Right now. And that him entering it, I guess, obliges everyone

to sort of be interested in it. But sorry, what is Claire McCaskill talking about on MSNBC right now? You know, other than coronavirus response. Is she that, is she so busy, you know? No, no, no, no, Claire McCaskill is coming at it from it. And that's a different one. I mean, I'm just talking about, I'm just talking

about the anchors basically and the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, was there, I mean, coming out strong, just basically saying anything that anyone does that I don't even know if jeopardizes is the right word because I don't know how we I don't think we know how this is all going to shake out but anything anyone does to disrupt the path towards Joe Biden's election should be condemned to hell. I mean that was basically it. I mean, the implication was that he that his candidacy would help would help Trump. But I think you can you can you can you know work that out in so many different ways.

I think that the real thing is just the kind of disruption at this point is not welcome, you know, sit back down your desk. on that sort of thing. So the idea being that like there are some Republicans or conservatives who are leery about voting for another Trump term. And Amash gives them a place to put their vote that's not Joe Biden. But like if that vote goes away from Donald Trump, right? I mean, it's really hard to imagine like a Democrat saying, I don't like Joe Biden,

but Justin Amash is the kind of guy I can get behind. I mean, that's what's weird about this. To me, it's much more deadly for Trump than anything else. And I understand like conservatives, there's this piece by Tim Alberta and Politico where Mark Sanford, former South Carolina congressman, you know, comes out and says he's going to hand the election essentially to Biden if he comes in. And so I guess you could read that both ways. I mean, the funny part about this third party candidacy, right, is there are third party candidates who conceivably at the right moment in American history could win the presidential election. Justin Amash is not one of those people. or ever, right? He is not going to be president. So we're almost solely talking about him as a spoiler.

So and as a kind of like lightning rod for anti-Trump, you know, kind of feeling within the Republican Party. Here's a real conservative, right? Unlike our, and here's somebody who's not, you know, telling us to all drink bleach, unlike the president of the United States, that kind of thing. Yes. The only thing I can think is that there's just so much uncertainty in the process. dating back to Trump's election. You know, the very notion of a voter that would switch from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump, I think, just scares the shit out of everybody in Washington.

And that Justin Amash as a, I think maybe his lack of profile might actually help him in that regard, that there would be just a sort of a class of performatively undecided voters who are interested in his candidacy because, you know, Biden is lame and Trump is bothering them right now.

but but yeah i mean i i agree with you i think the logic logically you would think it would work out in don't don't trump i mean in joe biden's favor for amosha run but i'm actually more interested in the spoiler element that you were talking about because to declare right now only has that one purpose you're right i mean it seems to only only have that one purpose i mean i guess there's i guess there could be a different purpose which is maybe you get more maybe it's all about profile building for a future run and this is a better and this is a better moment or even or absent the coronavirus this would be a better moment to achieve some sort of national profile, then it would have been just to get squashed in every primary by Trump, right? I mean, this gives you a little bit more, a little bit more profile from a,

you know, fighting the establishment or fighting the Trump establishment, whatever sort of point of view. But if he's a spoiler and if he knows that he's a spoiler, if the plan is to be a spoiler, then what is the plan? Is it just to bring down Trump? I mean, it seems like, it seems like he's kind of going about it the wrong way if that's the plan. Yeah, I mean, and that's what all these anti-Trump conservatives, right, sort of have to decide at some point. You know, how much do you want to be the guy who blows it, right? If there's, if there are tight races all over the Midwest and you by being a slightly bigger name conservative than maybe the guy who would otherwise win the Libertarian Party nomination,

do you want to be that guy who is a, well, you know, he took away X number of votes from Trump and then Joe Biden pulled out in Wisconsin and won the election? that kind of thing. So that's a calculation everybody has to make. And I think it has. I would actually like what you suggested, a list of things that scared the Democrats about the 2020 election that we could just back date to January at this point and run through November.

Because there's like a thousand things like times when Democrats got the jitters because they thought they were going to blow it. And this is got this will, this will be a data point because ultimately that's probably all that it will amount to. All right, David, let's do a little listener mail. we do this every Thursday. You can send us a note

at the press box pod about anything, and we'll do our best. This is from Beers, Bacon, and Backroads. What's your take on Jesse Ventura possibly being the spoiler in the presidential race? He has indicated he may run

for the Green Party nomination. Is that correct? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, Jesse Ventura is, there's a little hint of the conversation we had about Rodman earlier this week. Jesse Ventura is a kind of guy,

he was a very specific, like, crossover figure at a very specific point in our nation's history. And I think there will never be a day where Jesse Ventura could not get on, you know, the news channel of his choice, right? I mean, he just represents a certain thing. And we will always, just like, you know, people will always respond to O.J. Simpson tweets. People will always just like, you know, listen to, listen to what Jesse Ventura has to say about

whatever's going on, no matter how inane it may be. I mean, listen, I love Jesse Ventura as a professional wrestling commentator. but I find it, but the functional reality of this is that he will never be on any ballot and probably, you know, won't even try that hard to get on one. Yeah, he feels like a talk show guest more than an actual presidential candidate. He feels like Howard Stern running for mayor of New York or something, except like I, except I think Jesse probably believes in his candidacy a little bit more, but has a whole lot less like energy to fall through with it. Jesse Ventura only 68 years old. So he's quite a bit younger than the number of the current presidential candidates. I'm not sure I would have known that without looking. Also, hosts various and has hosted various shows on RT or RT America. So like all the kind of, you know,

fear and loathing and terror people had of RT. Like what if an RT host was on the presidential was on the presidential ballot? That'd be wild. This is from Jake Tuber, David. Does Fox's firing of personalities like Trish Regan and Diamond and Silk? signal anything broader about the network? Or are these just run-of-the-mill personnel changes? If you did not follow this story, Diamond and Silk, who were on the Fox Nation app,

had some truly crazy coronavirus theories. Diamond back in March, per the Daily Beast, said, what I need to know is how many people have passed away in New York? And what I need to know is who has the bodies? I need for somebody that does investigative work to call the morgues, to call the funeral homes.

We need to know, don't trust anything else that comes out of his mouth now. Something's not right here. Something is off here, et cetera, et cetera. So what should we read into the conscious uncoupling with Diamond and Silk and Fox News? I, Trish Regan, to be clear, was a Fox business host who said that the coronavirus was a, I believe was a, some sort of scam to get Trump out of office. The expanded Fox universe, I should say. I don't know. I mean, I think that, I think callously, it's easy to look at that or it's tempting to look at that and just be like, you know, you kind of like, fire the least significant person who does the same thing everybody else is doing to try to make it seem like you care about this issue or that you're taking it seriously.

But I'm sure there's more to it than that. More to it like they were totally expendable, all three of them. And I'm not and I'm and you know, just like anything else, everybody's looking to cut costs these days. I'm sure that there's a lot of, sure there's a lot of talent fees over it at, you know, Fox's online platform, you know, over the top platform that are probably, if, feel like they're being overpaid right now. But we'll see. I mean, I think that I think that probably it's just, you know, just trying to prove, trying to prove that they care when they clearly don't. Yeah, I think your most cynical thought is the correct one, which is that they don't really play

a huge role in the Fox universe. And so if you can make, you know, if you can get rid of somebody like this and kind of make a demonstration to media observers that, oh, hey, you know, Fox did get rid of to diamond and silk. But the question, of course, why are diamond and silk on any Fox property anyway? I mean, that's, that's just, that was, that's the crazy part, right? It's not, it's not that they, it's not that they finally went too far. Like, they've never not gone too far. So I just think that's what it is, you know, and Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, right? Those people who, and we've said what they, what they said about coronavirus way back when, they're not going anywhere. So I just think this is

the easiest, kind of the easiest people to cut. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to say what were they doing on any part of Fox? I mean, I think if you went down the Fox contributor, you know, payroll list, you'd probably be pretty shocked. You're right, but Diamond and Silk, I mean, that's still pushing on the power rankings of like contributors that have something to offer that is also true, I think Diamond Silk would fall pretty low on that list. I mean, Fox Nation employs the former pro wrestler, the Funkasaurus, who is not, not quite, not quite in the Jesse Ventura category of thinker, but, uh, but, but, but, dare you, sir, the Funkasaurus.

Yeah, it is funny that they just have this this whole sort of counter thing. It's like, yeah, if you like the Funkasaurus and Diamond and Silk, subscribe to our app. Here's Thomas Brooke. He asks, is Breaking News Chiron irrevocably broken on cable news. It took about a week into pandemic coverage to observe that it was permanently on the screen and sometimes used to announce an interview with a

reporter from the Atlantic, not actually. actual breaking news. I'll start on this one. I mean, we kind of learn that that breaking news thing would never go away about a decade ago. And that it would just be used all the time. I think there's a real sort of downside to doing it now when everybody is already afraid. And, you know,

you can be, you know, you're looking at television, right? And this is the idea, like how much actual coronavirus news occurs during a given day. You know, there's lots of helpful things to watch,

but in terms of like, this is breaking, this is important, you should know this, probably not all that much. But when you put that on television all day, all you're doing is trying to get people to keep watching, right? We're going to have a big revelation in 30 minutes.

Something's going to happen. Yeah. And there's something incredibly cynical about that. It's the reality show teaser before every commercial that makes you think a big fight's about to happen when you come back. And then they tease it and tease it to the last segment and there's never a fight or there's, you know, point in this, I feel like this has been going on for half a decade at least. I don't remember when

it was that MSNBC started running their little atomic clock, the countdown clock in the bottom left-hand corner. Was it during the last election cycle where like it would be, or was it like during a Trump investigation, whatever it was. It was just like, it started off as something legitimate, where it was just like countdown until, you know, the Comey public testimony or something like that. And then the next thing, you know, it was like they were using the same countdown clock to say like this many minutes until until, you know, Julian Castro appears on

Olberman, you know, whatever. I mean, it's just like the clock never ended, right? It was just like pointing out something different, something less significant each time. Yeah, I mean, breaking news is broken, but I'm not quite sure. I mean, the Kairns is not going to go away

unless they find something that's more, you know, flashy and urgent. This is from Brian Boyle. What is the best order to read Charles Portis's catalog? start with the most popular true grit the cult fan favorite dog of the south the most critically acclaimed masters of the Atlantis Masters of the

Masters of Atlantis Master of Atlantis Should I go in chronical, logical order of release? What say you, David? I just had this conversation with ringer staffer, Connor and Evans and actually only had the first part of it. Here's what I would say.

Dog of the South is number one, full stop. You got to read Dog of the South first. And you have to, and if dog of the South is not you know, your favorite book within like 50 pages, start over, try again. And if it's still not your favorite book, then this is probably a lost cause. But I will say, Dog of the South is number one. Number two is, I would say either Masters of Atlantis or Norwood, Norwood if you're a, if you're a, you know, connoisseur of first novels. I think there, I mean, I don't, I don't say that. I say that I think I am in a lot of ways, you know. I mean, I think I would recommend a lot of people like,

you know, read the wanderers, read those early Richard Price books before they get, too deep into the catalog or whatever. Or Masters of Atlantis, if you want to get something kind of more expansive and deeper and a little bit more head trippy. That would be one of those two for number two, but I would definitely go than True Grit number three. True Grit is maybe his probably his best book. I mean, just his most perfect, perfect book, but it's unlike everything else.

So to say it, I mean, you can only really appreciate it as a Charles Portis work after you've sort of, you know, been fully submerged in Charles Portis for a while. That would be my one, two, three. But, you know, do whatever you want. It's all good. We got a couple of notes on the backdrops reporters have when they beam into ESPN or one of the news networks. Michael Mason sends a sports media zoom backdrop pick three. Okay, you can only pick three for your hypothetical sports media member.

Got it. The Friday Night Lights book, a family photo, the Sports Illustrated football phone, North Dallas 40 poster pick with a former president Super Nintendo console Little League trophy vinyl collection or leather bound classic books

that's a pretty great list by the way. That's really good. That's really good. Friday night lights is up there. I mean that's got you got it. You got to have Beth in all. Yeah.

Yeah. The like the recent, I feel this whole kind of thing and look I am totally guilty of this because I rearrange my bookshelves all the time. But just like kind of bringing forth what you think is like the significant sports book and also the sports book that you would want people to associate with you. You know, if you just had to pick just one. That's a big deal. And I can only imagine doing that in front

of an audience of millions. This is from Aaron Saunders, kind of, Aaron Sanders, excuse me, kind of related. Have you guys seen the Twitter account room raider? What scores do you, do you think both of you would get if you had the account rate your Skype Zoom setups. I have not seen that, but I want to direct everybody's attention to the Twitter account bookcase credibility, where they rate the bookshelves of talking heads that pop up on the news networks. Oh, wow, that's great. This is bookcase credibility on former UK PM Gordon Brown. A standard bookcase is credibility wallpaper presentation, but notable for the double stacking everywhere and what appears to be three copies of the same book about Robert Kennedy, a kitchen sink approach.

That's sort of deadpan review of everybody's bookshelf. Get yourself over there to that account if you have not visited it. Here's a hypothetical. I feel we've done a couple of different ways, David, but Jeremy Schneider and Sean Campbell had similar questions. Alternate history. Had the coronavirus hit hard with Bernie Sanders, still the Democratic favorite, would it have cemented his position or at all changed the discourse.

role of government has been a flashpoint with socialism seemingly rejected, but now people need more government assistance. What do you think about that? I mean, if he, what, if it were, like, are we talking like pre-South Carolina? Yeah. Or like post-South Carolina neck and neck. Yeah, I think the Dem favorite would probably be pre-South Carolina. I mean, he would have been, he would have been kind of irresistible, I mean, seemingly irresistible if it was a pre-South Carolina kind of situation.

If it were actually pre-South Carolina, I mean, if we're that early in the the process, I think we'd be having lots of conversations about how to move the process forward. I mean, I don't think anyone would have called it a day at that point. But if we were like this deep in and he was like a 60-40 favorite or a 70-30 favorite or something like that, then yeah. I mean, I think he'd have a real platform to kind of cement that place. It would be really interesting. It'd be really interesting to see kind of how the Democratic establishment reacted to something like that. But it's so hard to game that out. I don't know. What do you think?

I think it's like a couple of different forces working on it. I think when when this whole thing started, there was a push to say, we cannot have a Democratic primer anymore. So anybody who was in the lead at that point would have had something of an advantage, right? Like if we're just going to shut this thing down and I'm in the lead, then there's a case that I am going to win or I'm, or at least there's a real good case for just making me the nominee. That's one thing. The second thing, though, is I just wonder if that had happened if the whole rally around Joe Biden effect would have just happened earlier. If a lot of those Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar level candidates would have been like, you know what? Coronavirus pandemic descending on America, Donald Trump not ready.

Donald Trump denying it exists. Our only hope to win this thing is the experience guy. Let's defer. Let's rally around him like two weeks a week earlier than we might. had done already, like right after Nevada, maybe. I don't know. I could see either one happening. And finally, David, from Mike Balls-Mullen,

with more people getting sick of being cooped up in their homes and wanting to go back to restaurants, et cetera, to alleviate that, will we see the literal meaning for dying of boredom? Probably a good time to eliminate dying of boredom from the vocabulary. I think dying, of anything, I think Greg, has already eliminated all those things from any current ringer story. So yes. Can somebody put Craig Gaines in charge?

I have more confidence in Craig Games than like 31 American governors at this point. Absolutely true. Absolutely true. And all the public press releases would be spelled and punctuated impeccably. All right. Time for David Chewmaker guesses a strain pun headline. And here, David, gives us a sigh to indicate his displeasure with a second. Monday's headline about the ESPN Michael Jordan Dock,

was Phil Jackson's legacy comes full triangle. Today's headline comes from Johnny Rads. It's from the Irish Daily Mirror. It touches on the Donald Trump bleach scandal we talked about on Monday. And the mirror says, you know, suggesting we can take Lysol to fight coronavirus is the last straw, David. The point of no return. Donald Trump must be removed from office right now

after suggesting that this might be possible. What was the Irish Daily Mirror's strained pun headline? Oh, that's... How do we remove a president from office here in the United States? Impeachment. Impeach. Just walking right up to it. Think of the product Donald Trump was...

Lysol. Mm-hmm. Lysol, it kind of. Bleach. Lysol impeach? What is that it? M. What?

M. M. Not impeach, but imbleach him. M bleach him. Oh, God. Okay. I think I might have gone with embleachment. Yeah.

But imbleach him, says the Irish Bailey. That's good. That's good. Mere. He is David Chum. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Monday and we need to address the sexual assault allegations against

Joe Biden. I think we've got enough info now to understand at least how we should begin to think about them. And of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian.