The Press Box - Covering Kavanaugh, Lee Jenkins Joins the Clippers, and the Podcast Bubble | The Press Box (Ep. 529)

Episode Date: September 25, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down the complicated media coverage surrounding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (03:00), NBA profiler Lee Jenkins's career pivot to front office of the L.A. Clippers (31:45), and whether or not the podcast bubble has burst (50:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly. I want to tell you about our great football coverage on the Ringer podcast network. Every Monday, Bill Simmons and Cousin Salle recap the weekend and guest next week's NFL lines on the BS podcast. On Wednesday mornings, Ryan Rucillo hits the hardest angles in college and pro football on our new podcast, dual threat. And on Wednesday nights, Cousin Sall and the degenerate trifecta figure out the best gambling angles on against all odds. In five times per week, the Ringer NFL show reacts to the latest news with Kevin Clark, Robert Mays, Tate Frayette. Michael Lombardi and the Dannasy football crew. Subscribe to the BS podcast, dual threat against all odds, and the Ring Your NFL show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

David, Mark Judge, a friend of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, wrote a thinly disguised memoir about their days at a Washington, D.C. prep school, and apparently portrayed Kavanaugh as a character named Bart O. Kavanaugh. What I want to know is, if you had to disguise someone's name in a Romana clay in the most ham-handed and obvious way possible, how would you do it? Can I just pick? Can I just do you? Sure. Because the first thing I thought of when I saw this was we're just like, you know, we've known each other for a long time. I've seen junk mail addressed to you under the wrong name, but it was clearly when something arrived at the apartment addressed to Mr. Byron.

Cortus than we knew exactly or any occurrence of brain or even the more conventional spelling of Brian listen nothing could be can beat Bart O'Cavanaugh. That might be the greatest for monoclay

or just name for I mean just any kind of name ever created so I'm tempted just to go with Brian O'Curdis but I think that the answer here is for you when you read my memoir

you will know it's you when you see the name Curtis O'Brien So it's almost too easy Yeah It has to be yeah Because the key here right is it has to be Totally obvious About who it is

But also completely ridiculous Which is kind of a great combination Bartow Kavanaugh is sort of like A sixth grade boys idea of what a name is You know I'm not quite sure Like I don't know I'm not sure I'm not sure would ever meet anybody in life named Bartow Cavanagh,

but that sounds vaguely like a name that would appear in like a preteen adventure novel. Yeah, that are a 1920s silent film somehow. Yeah. You should call Davio Sneaker Builder and I by our real names. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. The Pressbox is the media podcast where you are not allowed to get a Rod Rosenstein scoop wrong. Oh, man. But you are allowed to fight about it on Twitter for all of our amusements.

We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer on a number. an extremely newsy week, David. We are back with three topics. First, we will talk about the media hall of mirrors that has been built around Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, and the now two accusations of sexual assault against him. Second, we talk about NBA profiler, extraordinaire Lee Jenkins, moving from Sports Illustrated to the LA Clippers front office.

What happens when a journalist goes to work for the very people he once covered? And finally, has the podcast bubble burst? Will it burst before we're done with this podcast? Before we get to the overwork Twitter joke of the week, we'll examine a couple of bad omens from the last two weeks. Plus, as always, that overworked Twitter joke. But, David, let's start with Brett Kavanaugh. Back in July, and boy, there's a lot to get through here to even get to the questions. Back in July, a research psychologist named Christine Blasey Ford contacted Washington Post reporter Emma Brown with an accusation that Brett Kavanaugh,

Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her while they were in high school. Blasie Ford was concerned about going on the record at that point because of the media whirlpool. She would no doubt be plunging into. Well, here we are in that whirlpool right now. Let's do the allegations first, just in case anybody has not followed this. This is again, according to the Washington Post, Emma Brown, while his friend watched Kavanaugh pinned her to the bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers, and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit in the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his husband.

hand over her mouth. I thought he might inadvertently kill me, said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist at Northern California, he was trying to attack me and remove my clothing. Does it strike you, David, as surprising or maybe surprising

the wrong word, interesting that as soon as this came to light, that both sides were just dug in immediately, that there was no, that it was so hard to find someone who said, I support everything Brett Kavanaugh stands for, and would stand for on the Supreme Court, but I think this makes him ineligible for the court, right?

I support him completely politically. Yeah. I mean, did you locate that person in the world over the last couple of days? Because I didn't. No, I mean, there's a little bit of a feeling, and I don't want to be overly cynical about this, but there was a little bit of a feeling of, I mean, it did feel immediately political, and I think that there, this is. is totally cynical for me to say, so I'll just put that out there. But it felt it did have a sense of a

ropedope right at the beginning that it was that it was a, this is the Republican response you're talking about? No, no, no, no, the initial, like if you're going to be a Republican, you're going to look at it totally cynically. It seemed like they were just like, like from a totally political point of view, like you, the Republicans knew they couldn't over commit because they were, because the fear was that there was, you know, a bigger swing that, that, that, that someone was holding in reserve. But no, I mean, it is, it is, I guess, I mean, it's just to answer your question, it's a, I don't know, I mean, it's, you're right, it's, it's, it's sort of mind-boggling. There was nobody, there was nobody willing to take that middle ground stance, but I mean, it's not even middle ground. That's the wrong way to put it. It's just common sense. It's human, you know, human being. But I think it's because everybody was already so dug in. I mean, the people who were, I mean, everybody already had, everybody had already taken. Everybody had, everybody had already taken. sides, you know, if not, if not by virtue of just the, the, the political age that we live in, I mean, even the people who were on the, who, who were the sort of, you know, deciding votes

had, were already play acting this, this sort of ridiculous, you know, this, this, this, this, this, this, this ridiculous role of, of coming to a steady decision, you know, or, I mean, after a period of time, it, I don't think anybody really had the, had the, had the, the, the, the brain, to consider what a human path forward might look like. Yeah. And to put this aside for just a second, if that's possible, it was an amazing reminder to me how much play acting there is in a Supreme Court nomination period, even before you get to something like this where, as you say, senators from both sides have to pretend to be sitting

there making a good faith calculation on whether the justice is qualified or not, when, in fact, you pretty much know how they're going to vote or why they're going to vote, excuse me, which is just basically their own political calculation of how they should vote. Yeah. And then the second part is, of course, the nominee, Kavanaugh is sitting there getting asked questions about abortion and all these things. And this happens with every nomination and pretending that not refusing to say how he would rule on anything.

Because, oh, I haven't, you know, look, I just have to see the case. When he, of course, knows how he's going to come down on 90% of things. So there's a certain show in this, this certain media show. And then, of course, things like Kavanaugh bringing the girls' basketball team members to sit behind him. And then after this accusation came on, we had the women for Kavanaugh bus, which was engineer apparently organized by this public relations firm that was on Twitter and things like that. But it's really, and I guess a lot of people from Mark this week about how similar this is to the Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas episode. now 27 years ago. And that's truly, again, I think it's funny because that is something that had a little bit,

it was that one HBO documentary, it was a documentary or, or, uh, many series about it. But otherwise it kind of receded to some extent into, into memory. And now we have almost just such a similar, again, not necessarily the accusation itself, but by the actors and everyone playing their roles down to the same political. party on both sides of the on both sides of the whole thing yeah i mean it did the hearing was very disheartening before we even got to this stuff i think that that's i think that you're right about that um it was carrie washington who played the need a hill in confirmation that came out a couple years ago there we go um and it was but yeah i mean that was that was that felt um yeah i mean that that it

I have so much, so many thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, watching the confirmation, it seemed mind-boggling the degree to which that, you know, it was all a put on and that everybody seemed to be abetting it. Now, I know that to some extent, this is the Republicans being the party in power. I'm not trying to make a, you know, a determination on which side is better or worse, but Republicans who were sort of exploiting the, exploiting the congressional rules and norms to sort of steamroll somebody through.

You know, there's not a law about what percentage of their papers or whatever else you need to see before it goes through. There's not really set laws. I mean, that insist upon a fully fleshed out investigation, background check, or hearing length or the amount of time you have to spend

in this sort of deliberation. And so if you put on the sort of pomp and circumstance of a normal confirmation hearing or what we're expected, you know, if you make it look like a confirmation hearing and sound like a confirmation hearing and then you go out there in front of the

CNN cameras and insist that we've had a confirmation hearing and you don't know what all the complaints are about, then you can just sort of force anything through. You know, there were some Democrats there who were, who were in opposition to, who were loudly in opposition to some of the, you know, minor things that they could oppose. There was also a lot of,

of, you know, posturing for the next presidential race going on in that, in that room. Sure, that's what I meant by immediate political calculation, right? Yeah. How does this play in the Democratic primary in two years? And then for people in West Virginia and North Dakota, right, candidates, you know, who are running, Missouri, you know, how does this play in my very sure-to-be-tuff reelection campaign? Yeah. I mean, it's, and you mentioned it. I mean, clearly, you know, who, I don't understand how you can vote. I don't understand how you can, how you can support Brett Kavanaugh as a,

not just for Supreme Court, but as a living organism, if you're going to take him at his word that he hasn't thought through some of these, some of these potential court cases that might appear before him, you know? That's so ridiculous. It's just, it's so dumb. And I, and I guess that it's, I'm not sure why we're all willing to go along with the charade, you know, and I know, and I'm not sure why, I guess as much as I think that all the allegations, each of the allegations, if true, that have come out about Kavanaugh are disqualifying. It's sort of, it's it's, it's kind of wild that that's what it takes to sort of to jolt the media and the political system into a moment of, of, uh, reflection. Um, and not like, we know with 99.9% certainty that this decision will mean the end of legal abortion in America. you know, I mean, or, or something else, you know, I mean, whatever. There's, that there's not a means of actually, like, investigating, uh, the significance of the pick as opposed to just the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the grabbiness of the ratings for the

pick. Well, if Blasey Ford was worried that her coming forward would result in her not getting a fair hearing, here's what happened, right? You had Donald Trump's, uh, tweet after. sort of a long and unusual silence, asking why didn't she report this back at the time, which led to the hashtag campaign, why I didn't report. You have Mitch McConnell, a couple of minutes before we get on the air, calling the allegations a shameful, shameful smear campaign greeted by Democrats. That's according to the AP, right?

So, again, not, not, let's see if this is, let's hear this out. Let's see what this woman has to say. but before she testifies, let's call this a shameful, shameful smear campaign. And then you had, I think, in media terms, just one of the oddest things I've ever seen, which is the Ed Whelan's second man theory of the case. Weillan, at Wheelan, who works for the ethics and public policy center and was called by Politico before this theory was fully unveiled a. sober-minded straight shooter in the minds of people around Washington.

Rich Lowry of National Reviewer, Wheelan Wright, said he was the model of careful discerning legal analysis and commentary. He comes out last Tuesday in tweets by one week from today I expect that Judge Kavanaugh will have been clearly vindicated on this matter. Specifically, I expect that compelling evidence will show his categorical denial to be truthful. And Kavanaugh did deny the allegations categorically. It was reported later that Wheelan kept the reveal. So immediately people start thinking, well, this guy must know something.

This guy must have a piece of evidence that will exonerate Kavanaugh once and for all. Politico later reported that he kept the reveal to himself. This is per the reporter Eleana Johnson. Also that during this period he was working with CRC Public Relations, which was the same firm that handled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, if you remember them from the 2004 presidential campaign. and then Wheeland, and here I'm calling Vox, comes out with his theory, or comes out with what he says is evidence, I guess. Here we go.

Using a map of homes surrounding the Columbia Country Club near where both Ford and Kavanaugh attended high school and floor maps available on the real estate website Zillow. Raise your hand if you thought Zillow would be involved in the Supreme Court confirmation. Weillan argued that based on Ford's statements of what happened that night back in 1982, the perpetrator was not likely Kavanaugh and said he pointed to a classmate of Kavanaugh as at Georgetown. prep who in Wheelan's view looked a lot like Kavanaugh. Again, that's a pretty dry recitation of this tweet storm. But we were shown maps of this other house, a kind of geography of this house that matched some of the allegations that Blasey Ford had made. We were shown side by side yearbook pictures of Wheelan and this other classmate who we are

not going to name unlike Ed Weillen here because we don't do that kind of stuff. Ford quickly issued a statement saying, I knew them both and socialized with them and there is zero chance I would confuse these people. And Wheelan's tweet storm was met by incredulity, even from fellow conservatives like Ben Shapiro, who tweeted, dude, what are you doing as soon as he started tweeting? By Friday, Wheelan was saying, I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread. I grievously and carelessly wronged the person I identified and I owe him and his family

my deepest apology. What in God's name did you make of that bit? This is like Grandpa's first message board. This is what we've encountered here. This is like when you're far off elderly relative starts forwarding you emails and they're not, it's not their personal politics. They've just, they've never encountered something like this before.

You've never encountered, you weren't aware that the internet could find the wrong Boston bomber and does it frequently? You know, this is, it's like when you, I'm sure that whether he did it or whether someone put it up to it, and it seems like the latter, that he just was seduced by, by, you know, by the level of, I mean, sure, it's a very, it's a, it's a, it's a compelling coincidence if you stumble upon it yourself. We've all been there. In the internet age, we need a little bit higher of a bar. And if you're, you know, if this is your career, if this is someone, if you're, and if you have a platform, you need an even higher one.

Not to mention that this is a, this is like definitionally a conspiracy theory, right? I mean, then it's, that, and that, and that if you're off, if you're looking for a lookalike without, I mean, he hasn't explained how he got to this point. Yeah, I guess it's a wrong, I guess it's a wrong identity theory, though. He's not saying they conspired, though. He's just saying she made him instead.

Well, no, no, that, okay, it was part, this is a large, not part of a large, but, you know. No, no, no, but part of a larger theory that, that, that, oh yeah, I guess you're right. I guess, but I was, I guess I was relating to the larger theory that this is all, you know, Mitch McConnell's like great broad left-wing conspiracy or whatever against Bart O'Cavanaugh here. But the, but, but yeah, I mean, it's just so crazy that you would, that you would

convince yourself with, I mean, unless someone hand-fed him the information, which very well could have been the case, unless, unless Kavanaugh himself, you know, came to him and said, there was a guy that looked just like me. It must have been him. which again also could have been the case Yeah It's all it's I don't know It's very bizarre

Now who is in your in your analogy earlier Who is grandpa in this? Is Wheelan Grandpa? Yeah I think he's wheelin is Wheelan the guy who's Because does grandpa know the conspiratorial style Of the message board on his first visit to the message board Which appears to be here? No that's why that's why I think it's so seduced

I mean so seductive you know I mean you you you you if someone If someone you know, if you went to one of your grandparents with the, you know, all the, the, the information of just about anything that's on like Reddit's conspiracy page, it would look really compelling because there's like, you know, 50 pages of something that, that may be bullshit, but like, why would this information be accumulated otherwise? I mean, this is, we've been having this larger conversation for months now, uh, as a society, as a country about whether women who come forward with an accusation of sexual assault, who are victims of sexual assault. can get a quote unquote fair hearing, right, and can come forward and and speak or, you know, say their, say their piece with, you know, in an environment that's not going to judge them. Here you have somebody who going through ridiculous and evidence-free lengths to suggest that she just picked the wrong person out of her, out of her, out of this class at Georgetown Prep. that was that was that was that was that was the hearing that this person got right not when people i mean

that's incredible when when people discuss i know this has come up before when people talk about like institutional sexism into institutional racism in our in our country if if there's if if if you want to take ed wheelin give him the benefit of the doubt that this was not a deliberate smear campaign on his part against a valid accusation right give him the benefit of the doubt this is the wildest built-in sexism that you could possibly, misogyny, that you can possibly comprehend, that you would just assume by dint of America, by like your experience in life,

that anything like this must be a lie. You know, that you'd go off looking for such a cockamamie defense. It's mind-boggling. A couple other media notes about where we are, and we're awaiting the likely testimony. again, this is probably going to be outdated by the time you listen to this, but we're waiting the likely testimony of Blasey Ford.

Last night, there was a yet another accusation leveled against Kavanaugh that appeared in the pages as a New Yorker and a story written by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow, which also will be an interesting thing. Michael Avanotti lawyer to Stormy Daniels has talked on Twitter about possessing or being in contact with a person who would also go to make some kind of accusation and who is not the woman named in the New Yorkers who talked to the New Yorker. A couple of the media notes, though. One is Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley's tweets.

Did you see this, David? This was from Friday. Judge Kavanaugh, I just granted another extension to Dr. Ford to decide to see if she wants to proceed with a statement. I hope you, letter you understand. It's not my normal approach to be, letter B, indecisive. A lot of people commented it was really unclear whether Grassley knew, thought he was DMing or even texting Brett Kavanaugh with that. That was just a tweet.

Really, really strange. Also, Garrett Ventry, who became an aide to Chuck Grassley to work on this confirmation hearing, then resigned on Saturday morning after NBC reported a 29-year-old Ventry had been fired in 2017 because he faced an accusation of sexual harassment from a female employee, among other things, which was a strange. There's also, I mean, we have,

Chris Alameda was kind enough to give us all the conspiracy theories that have come out about this on the internet, including one that Blasey Ford made similar accusations against Neil Gorsuch during his nomination, which is completely ridiculous and completely false. Was that a thing?

That was a thing. I guess the Wheelan one stood out because it was, it was, you know, delivered by someone in Washington who has some credibility, right? This was not Alex Jones. But I think your point is really important here. When we talk about how this played in the media, it was the GOP media strategy to say that it was wrong identity, right?

This is Orrin Hatch last Monday. Ford must be mixed up or mistaken about the identity of that person who allegedly assaulted her. That's via a Politico summary. So this wasn't just one person, right? This was a particularly ridiculous and outlandish telling of it. But their media strategy was to go to the media and say she was mixed up or mistaken or in McConnell's case, say it was a smear campaign or in Trump's case to cast doubt on it saying, why didn't she report it back when it happened if it's true? But all those things were put into the media to try to discredit it. Yeah.

I mean, listen, we've, you know, we've talked about the Democratic leadership on this show. before two. I have to do. We just need to make a pledge to stop listening to Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and all that whenever they're made. Because this is just, I mean, McConnell is a is a lousy human being. And I say that as a long time Kentuckian. But he's just out there trying to put do a little. He's like trying. He's just testing the waters. He's just out there like trying to like take, like be like a human. shield for his little deplorable caucus, you know? And, uh, and, and, and, and I hope that, I hope, I mean, I don't think we should, I don't think we should, I don't think we should waste too much time on him, although I just

did. Um, but yeah, I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, you know, I mean, everything's been, all this news keeps tumbling out. We got, I mean, the best example you need of that is Michael Avanotti, who, who put out that he had another accuser that was a client of his, and then immediately thereafter had to clarify that it wasn't, that it wasn't the same accuser that the New Yorker had just published their story about, you know, and it was, things were just tumbling out. But it's tumbled out in such a way that I don't know that anybody, that even, you know, I mean, that anybody has a firm footing on what to do.

and and and and and and from from a political perspective and even from an even from a humane you know ethical perspective i mean what's the i mean the the the um yeah it's it's it's hard it's hard to see a way through this that doesn't um you know that doesn't significantly damage the lives of of who you know the innocent parties well yeah and that's a takeaway for me too is but beyond just utter hopelessness is, you know, we've seen with less moon vests and we've seen with Harvey Weinstein, you know, it's like every time there's a smitten of light to say these kind of things can, these kind of accusations can come forward, we can listen to the women, we can, we can hear it out. Then you see that it is nothing but, you know, a small footnote in a larger process,

in this case, an explicitly political process. Just at the risk of being totally pedantic about this. Please. Please go ahead. Yeah, I mean, it's like the idea, I mean, if you find yourself asking why she didn't go to the police at the time of the, you know, this is Ford, Dr. Ford, obviously. If you find yourself like the president saying you wish that she would have gone to the police or he said the FBI at the time of the incident and you can't wrap your mind around why she wouldn't have, you're an idiot, figure out why, right? And if you find yourself now asking, like, why would she only do it now? I mean, this is the easiest thing to comprehend.

Like, that you would see someone who wronged you in such a terrible way so many years ago at this position about to be put on the Supreme Court of the United States. This is the time that you would bring it up. If you find yourself asking these questions, like, investigate yourself for institutional misogyny or whatever misogyny there is inside you. Or, you know, think about. the way think about the the the politics that have led you to believing that this makes that this is a a common sense a line of thought or read anything in the why i didn't report hashtag

i mean i mean you will understand you will understand how complicated uh and just soul killing these things are all right david on that note of hopelessness now time for the overwork 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 you know how i always love when everyone tweets friday news dump My contention being that there are more people tweeting Friday news dump than there are actually our Friday news dumps at this point in history. Well, today, Rod Rosenstein, the news that he may be fired may have already tendered his resignation broke on Monday morning. And it was an overworked Twitter joke to say classic Monday morning news dump. See, you create your own reality in this business, right?

You say there's so many Friday. And when it's a Monday, you go, this is crazy. It's a Monday morning news dump because we keep saying there was a Friday one. in other news David did you see the story about the NFL linebacker who admitted to insider trading Michael Kendricks said he was an unwitting participant in a scheme of a former friend he gets cut by the Browns and then signs with the Seahawks and then he makes a big play against the Bears last Monday night where it seemed like he knew what was going to happen and it was an overworked Twitter joke to say it's almost like Michael Kendricks had some inside info on that play thanks to Jeff Eisenband

for that one. Last week, we also talked about the story of Bill's cornerback, Vante Davis, retiring at half time of a game when his team was being blown out by the Chargers. Well, the hapless bills came back this week and blew out the Vikings. Despite being a 16.5 point underdog, it was an over Twitter joke to say, Vante Davis is waiting in the locker room to unretire. Thanks to Roger Simon, I think that's how you say your name for that one. And finally, in honor of Rod Rosenstein Day, should we do some rod jokes that we're all over Twitter today?

Are you ready for the Rod puns? Let's do it. Spare the Rod. That was good. Rod Save America from our old pals at the Crooked Media. Jonathan Bernitsky, who I believe is a PhD student in Cambridge from his Twitter bio, suggests the following grace of Rod, active Rod, the Rod couple, the Rod delusion. Oh, wow.

Is that a Richard Dawkins remember? Yeah. Rod only knows and the Rod complex. The lesson here is if your name rhymes with God. There are going to be a lot of puns, right? I did not see, oh, Rod, you devil on that list. Were you guys talking about The Simpsons and Rod We Trust when I jumped on the audio today? Oh, David, we were, season five, episode 15, known as Deep Space Homer. Hit it, Jim.

How'd you solve the door drama? Homer Simpson was the real hero here. He jury rigged the door close using this. Hey, what is that? It's an inanimate carbon rod. Ah, one of the greats. Still current. Still current, at least on political Twitter. Thanks to Brian Moritz for self-nominating himself for that one. By the way, this is the inanimate carbon rod is maybe the greatest metaphor for, well, for politics in general, but for Rod Rosenstein, possible. He is just an oddly shaped thing that is standing in between us and catastrophe.

It's really, really, really impressive. David and I are going to talk about the new job for NBA writer Lee Jenkins. right after this short break. Introducing Audible Originals a new member benefit. Audible originals are exclusive audio titles created by celebrated storytellers from worlds as diverse as theater, journalism, literature, and more.

Every month, Audible members get one credit for any audiobook plus two Audible Originals from a changing selection that you can't get anywhere else. You also get access to audio fitness and health workouts created exclusively for Audible. Audible has the largest selection of audiobooks on the planet, which lets you fill your fall with stories like, stories like, shall we say, Bob Woodward's fear, David,

to pick us some recent podcast subjects, Michelle Obama's forthcoming memoir. I think, you know, those are probably right in our audience's wheelhouse. Listening with Audible lets you get more books in your life because with the free Audible app you can enjoy them anytime, anywhere, at home, at the gym, while commuting or doing chores. Plus, your books are yours to keep.

With Audible, you can go back and listen at any time, even if you cancel your membership. Get your first audiobook free and choose two titles from a curated list of Audible originals when you try Audible for 30 days. Visit Audible.com slash press box or text press box to 5-0-5-0. That's A-D-I-B-L-E. Dot com slash press box or text press box to 500-5-0. Topic number two, David.

Wait, before we get to topic number two, as this is reporting in real time, This is the constantly evolving story. Michael Grimbaum just tweeted that Kavanaugh is going to break his silence tonight on Fox News, alongside his wife Ashley. They have taped the interview with Martha McCallum set to air this evening. Wow. In the middle of the confirmation. He's going to go on Fox News. As our ringer, as our ringer partner, Lindsay Zolad says in our group slack, nothing says,

now let's go and make this nonpartisan. Like, sorry, let's not go and make this partisan, like giving an interview to Fox News. There you go. All right. You need more pleasant news. If you missed it this week, ESPN's Adrian Wognerowski reported that Lee Jenkins, a journalist known for sensitive long-form profiles of NBA stars,

is leaving Sports Illustrated for a job with the LA Clippers. No, Jenkins is not going to be writing for clippers.com. He's interviewing draft prospects or somehow using his profiling skills to tell the team things about a player and how he might or might not succeed in the NBA that perhaps the clippers couldn't get through the usual channels. David, what was your first reaction to this?

I've got lots of stuff to say, but what was your first reaction when you saw this news? Well, I mean, it is a sort of rarefied, very, I mean, just, you know, ivory towered space that you and I occupy as the co-hosts of a weekly media podcast. So it's really hard to divorce my, just whatever my human reaction was from just, oh, shit, here's a thing we're going to talk about on the press box.

Like, I know with one million percent uncertainty that this link that I'm emailing Brian will become a topic of our recorded conversation. I, um, yeah, I mean, I think that I, that you, it's, there's obviously multiple things going on at the same time here, but I was, but I think I was in predominantly, my reaction was just a sort of confusion, you know, just like, what the hell is happening here? Not in the, not, only because the title was so bizarre and, um, the context was so hazy, you know, I mean, if they had said, you know, we're going to pay him a million dollars a year to be the editor-in-chief of clippers.com, you know, that, that would have least been, you could have wrapped your mind around that.

Um, if there had been more concrete rumors, I mean, if it had been more, If there had been, yeah, if the rumors had been anything resembling concrete that he had a special line to Kowai Leonard or Jimmy Butler or whoever else, you know, certainly people pointed that out that he had written about them. But, you know, if this felt more like hiring someone's high school basketball coach, even that would have been more understandable, right? But it all just, it was all just very confusing, you know, and it was certainly out of the blue. Yeah, I think the first, and to me, sort of less satisfying the question was ask, well, what will he do? You know, how will he help the clippers? How does it? Because I think we've seen, I saw this compared to sort of like Bill James or something like that or even John Hollinger, right, going from ESPN.

Was it ESPN to the Grizzlies? Yes, it was ESPN. Yes, I before ESPN. But those guys strike me as different because they were taking, like, they have like, we have a system of understanding the sport, right? Well, yeah, I mean. Like, we want to come in here and tell you, like, we have, we have an idea that we want to propound. So a little, I mean, just to get a little bit in the weeds about that. I mean, certainly Bill James was the godfather of, you know, statistical analysis in baseball.

I think by the time that he was, that he was, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, by the time that he was actually hired by the Red Sox, there was, I mean, the sea change had already kind of taken place in baseball. It's true. That he and many people were his acolytes, essentially. But he was being brought on to, you know. Yeah, no, but I think, but I think it's an important distinction that it's, I mean, for, on the one hand, he's someone that has lived in these, you know, in the sort of statistical waters for so long that he just, you know, he lived and breathed it, right? I mean, he understood it on a way he wasn't just applying something.

It was. And he also has this sort of, this sort of godfather appeal to people who are, who are, who, who are, who are, who, who are reared that way in the business. Hollinger, I think, was a little bit more of a proprietary statistical thing. I mean, he had some methods of player evaluation that certainly, you know, the Grizzlies were not privy to at that point. But you're right. Those are, in a sense, they're both numbers crunchers. So it's bringing a different point of view that, you know, more of a scientific point of view.

Whereas Lee Jenkins, it's a much vaguer, you know, job description. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't, though, strike me that he, I mean, he's a basketball expert, right? I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't strike me that, like, you know, people who work in, that Lee Jenkins, there's not, there's, there's very little. I mean, I'm happy to say, I was actually talking to Kevin O'Connor about this in the office a while ago, and Kevin was, was quite rightfully sticking up for front office employees. But I'm like, wouldn't Lee Jenkins be a basketball expert, just like lots of people in basketball front offices? And he's been his whole, you know, the most of his career working on this stuff. He'd strike me as he'd be out of place just because he's a journalist.

I guess... Oh, no, not at all. I mean, I think that that's a... And I think that, you know, the... I think that we, you know, we approach it all from the side of the writer, right? From the journalistic side. And it's a... I'm sure there's a certain amount of envy built into a lot of the reactions because, you know, ethics aside, you know, that's certainly the call that we all hope we're going to get someday.

And not just from a basketball team. Oh, I want to get... Let's pause on that thought for a minute that we all. that we all want to get someday? Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, no, no. I mean, I think that... Who's we?

Well, you said, uh-huh, before that. So I just want to point that out. We broadly define. No, I mean, I think that it's not so much, not so much working for a basketball team or going or kind of jumping over the fence and, you know, from reporting on to working in, you know, a field, any field. But, you know, I mean, I think just the sort of more broad, in a broader sense, the idea that like a very wealthy person will just will swoop down from the sky and acknowledge

our own unique genius and pay us large sums of money just to be that to be that person with no results you know with no results entailed in the contract are we working for the medicis or something this is like a very old form of patronage here isn't it i i think yeah yes but i think but i think i mean that's i'm not saying everybody says yes to that job but that's you know there's there's there is definitely an allure there that's the that's it speaking of saying yes to that job to me, there was a kind of a celebratory error on NBA Twitter. Would you say that's fair when this happened? Sure. Yeah.

I find that confusing for a couple of reasons. Number one, if you love Lee Jenkins as a journalist, and I don't blame you if you do, but if you love Lee Jenkins as a journalist, isn't it sad that he's leaving journalism? As happy as you might be for Lee Jenkins on his own, if you think he's a great, unmissable block of journalistic granite, you're losing him from journalism at this. this point, right? We all know that. He is not, he, for however long he works there, he's not going to be writing for those profiles anymore, which I find strange. But number two is, I just think it's a big deal to me to go from, I am a journalist to I am going to work for the people

I was covering. This is not, I'm going to go write a novel. We're trying to write the great American novel. So Lee Jenkins may do that too at some point. Or going to go. open that cute B&B in the Central Texas Hill country that I've been dreaming of my whole life. This is, I'm going to go work for those guys I was covering. Not a choice I would make, at least as explicitly as that. And I just find that to be really, really odd. And for me, that you can go over to it reminds me of the journalists who went to work for the Obama administration. and, you know, the Jay Carnies and the Richard Stangles and people like that.

And it was like, everybody's like, oh, that's great, great gig for him. It's like, great, wait, but what? He was covering politics and now he's going to work at the White House? You know, that's, again, I wouldn't tell Lee Jenkins he can't do that, he can do whatever he wants. That's fine. But that's a big Rubicon to cross for me. Yeah. It's not just like, oh, I'm a basketball writer and now I'm working in basketball kind of the same thing.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to work for those guys. You are crossing the moat here. And I don't know. That seems to be a big deal. I don't, I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and say it's not a big deal because certainly you, I mean, everything you said is true. I think it's, it's, you know, Obama, referencing those, those Obama hires, I do think

that that's, that's interesting just in terms of like the point in history that we're at, because it, because I think it's, it's an increasingly fuzzy line between those two. things. I mean, the tech world, you know, our tech writers always joke that, that every time there's a, every time there's a big convention or, you know, Apple's announcing the new iPhone, there's always a couple people who were like on Twitter who are like, by the way, I know you're used to reading my coverage of these Apple events, but I won't be covering it this year because I now work for Apple. It happens every year. You know, it happens all the time. The line is, the line is non-existent. And I guess, you know, with the financial discrepancy between the two sides,

it's not that surprising. And certainly there's a lot of people who, you know, the tech side in particular, where people will have their conspiracy theories that it's an easy way for a corporation to shut up some of their, you know, more vocal critics. I don't think that's necessarily what happened here, if anything, the opposite with Lee Jenkins. But I guess for me, I have a little bit of sympathy for the people that went to work for Obama. Because if you cover politics, if you're that steeped in politics, then it doesn't surprise me that I can, I can imagine one getting disenchanted with, you know, kind of being forced to do horse race journalism on, you know, uncovering a subject that actually is meaningful, or maybe more meaningful than

that to you, and seeing an opportunity to really, you know, kind of do something more concrete and more real and more hopeful to, you know, pardon the pun, I can see the allure in that. And I'm not sure that there's a bit that, that now that I've, you know, gone through that mental exercise that it's not implausible that that would be something approaching the rationale for a sports writer as well, although the chasm is obviously bigger. I guess for me with sports, and this doesn't really apply to Lee Jenkins so much, but, you know, it doesn't surprise this when people that work for like baseball prospectus or football outsiders or any of these like stats-driven sites go to work for teams, right? Yeah, but I think that's a little different.

I do think it's a little bit different, but I think it's worth. sort of stipulating that. I mean, that, that, that, that we get, you know, our old buddy Bill Barnwell is, is, you know, just like there was a fork in the road and he took the, I write for ESPN fork, you know, or I write for Grantland Fork, as opposed to going to work for a team, but I'm not sure that those jobs were particularly, I don't think that there was a, there was an ethical or moral distinction for him. Yeah, I think when you, when you talk about it in terms of like, you know, you see the temptation of it. I see the temptation of it, too. I totally understand it. And if you're a basketball junkie, a basketball fan, somebody's interested in sport, the interest in doing it rather than just writing about it like we do.

Or, you know, fantasy jamming and fantasy drafting and all that stuff. I totally understand it. I just think it's important to say that these are different jobs that are almost at odds with each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not some continuum of basketball that you're in here. There's another way of looking at it, which I guess you could look at it that way, or some continuum of. of storytelling, which is one of the weirdest things. Like, I'm going to, you know, the Clippers,

that you're going to do storytelling and interviewing for the Clippers. Okay, well, that's just, that's very different. Maybe the same skills, but it's put to a completely different purpose than it is when you're working for Sports Illustrated. I just think that's a big deal. Yeah, and I'll say this. I mean, and this is the part that I agree with. You know, I mean, I would, if Elizabeth Warren is part of her presidential platform

wanted to pass a law that you, you know, that once you've become, or once you've moved from journalists to front office, you're never allowed to go back. That's fine. You know, like, I totally agree. We don't need to, we don't need to be having, you know, in-sport lobbyists, although I'm not sure that the journalist crossing lines is, is, you know, I mean, I don't think that's anywhere near the biggest ethical problem we have with, you know, players functionally owning agencies and, and, uh, agents becoming front office executives and going back and forth. But I do, you know, I agree that, that, you know, if you can make the case for the career move, maybe you can't make it over. You don't, you don't want to see this situation.

Certainly there'd be a bigger ethical, more ethical implications in my mind of kind of constantly going back and forth and this being more of an ongoing thing. Yeah. Ethical, by the way, is not a word I would use for this. But it's not like he's violating, I mean, you can change careers. It's not like you're violating some, you know, sacred laws of. of the trade. But I just think that you're doing a different job. And in fact,

you're doing the job. That you're doing the job is essentially the opposite of the job you were doing before. Yeah. And I think that it's totally, I think it's totally reasonable for, I mean,

and not, I don't think that there's any sort of underhandedness going on here. I think it probably is a lot more about doing another job that you've seen and that sounds cool. If anything, his current job just gave them access

to like, you know, the people and the concept of a job with the team in a way that he wouldn't have had before. If this happened in another industry, you know, and say in tech, going back to that example, I think it is worth like, it would be worth your former employer reviewing your work to see if there was anything

problematic in what you'd written that led you to this job offer. Yeah, or even less than that, just reading all your work in a completely different way. Yeah. Like, let me, as an audience, yeah. Let me put Lee Jenkins aside for a second, just say myself, if I took a job tomorrow for ESPN, not covering the media, but helping ESPN to. make better shows to put on in the middle of their daily lineup and deciding which announcers to hire and fire and put on certain broadcasts, someone would be absolutely within their

rights to go back and look at everything I've written about ESPN over the last couple years and look at it in a completely different light. Absolutely. Did Brian, you know, was Brian when he was writing this thinking about working at ESPN? Was Brian pulling a punch? Was Brian at all this time really interested in creating and making TV shows himself rather than reporting on the industry? I think all those questions would be absolutely valid. I'd hope people, as a journalist, I hope people would ask those questions because it just would, you know, again, it's like if I'm making sure, like right now I write about broadcasters and television and all that kinds of stuff, if I was doing that and then was going to work doing that, job.

I would hope people would look at a scantz or a new, let me put it that way, look a new at what I'd written before. Somebody compared this, by the way, to remember Pauline K.L. gets hired away from the New Yorker to go very briefly and unsatisfyingly for her go make movies in Los Angeles. Elvis Mitchell is another one. Yeah, but it's like, it's sort of like with her, it was almost like they were neutralizing a poison pen, somebody who was, who was Terry, the boys of a poison pen. somebody who was Terry,

the boy's a part. And with Jenkins is different, right? Because you're not, you're not, you know, a Lee Jenkins profile of your athlete was almost certainly going to make people like your athlete more than they did before or understand your athlete in the way they did before.

So it's not like you'd want to take him off the market, you know, in a way like that. But I just, you know, again, I just think it's, I just think it's different.

And I think it's interesting. And by the way, there's a long, long history of this in sports and, politics. This is not new. This is not date to build James. This goes I just think it's, I just think we have a, you know, the owner of the team, and I think one of our co-workers probably pointed this out to me, but you know, he's, he comes from the tech world. And when all this, and his MO is, is partly just getting all the smart people that he meets

together in a room and hope something good comes out of it, you know, and the end that you, and you can imagine someone, you can imagine a great owner, you know, being, being a little bit, uh, exhausted by hearing the same sorts of voices over and over again in the front office, you know, and not really having that, you know, that diversity of outlook and of point of view. And you could understand why someone is smart and gifted as Lee Jenkins would seem like a great hire, right? So, I mean, from that side, I guess it's not that complicated, despite, I mean, whether or not you have a, you know, a real job description in their form. And Bill James, you know, we should, we should mention that Ben McGrath wrote a piece about this

and the New Yorker. That was just a sort of beautiful, all-encompassing brief piece that sort of explained and also carpet-bombed everything within the radius of it. But there was a, you know, Bill James makes the point that, like, you know, if there's a, if Lee Jenkins is a, even a marginal aid in evaluating players' personalities before they're drafted or signed a big contract, then he's going to pay for himself without any trouble at all. So I guess from the clipper side

It's not incredibly complicated Or confounding But this is different And in the same piece Jenkins was Was sort of mum on whether or not He would ever write about his experience there And that sort of thing

I mean I think that's certainly the more interesting part All right topic number three David The podcast bubble Do you feel a bubble bursting David Beneath us as we speak or around us as we speak Because that's what some people said after last week's news from the podcast world. This BuzzFeed, and this is per pointer, announced Wednesday it'd be discontinuing most

of its podcast and firing its in-house audio team among the victims of the see-something, say-something podcast, and what's left. On the other side of the digital realm, Panoply, a podcast company created by the Slate Group, announced it would, quote, no longer be developing new podcasts and be letting go of some of its editorial staff. CEO Brendan Monaghan told Neiman, whose Nick Qua broke the initial story, the Panoply has decided to focus solely on growing our podcast and hosting, podcast hosting and ad services business and exit the podcast content business.

Some of Panoply's producers and shows, he continues, we'll be moving to our sister company Slate. That's Monaghan talking. All right. So, podcasting. What did you make of this? Is this one of these,

I sort of think we're all grasping. First of all grasping is, like, is media going to be in business tomorrow? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This feels to me a little bit like a blip or sort of the natural kind of reordering of podcast mania that seemed to have gripped society for the last couple of years. But what did you make of all this? Yeah, it is. Yeah, and you're right. It's the, it's, we're all trying to figure out what, I mean, listen, I was having the different conversations about podcasts days before this news started coming out.

and, you know, these conversations never stop about what are, what are podcasts really worth? And, like, for what companies are they actually valuable and, you know, how much money can you possibly make? You know, listen, you know, leaving the ringer out of this, we hear rumors, not rumors, you see stories all the time about the kind of top flight podcasters and how much they could possibly be making. And then everybody in the industry swoops in and sort of tweets, oh, God, those numbers are all bullshit one way or the other, you know? I mean, it's all this sort of funny money. And it's, and I think that, I think that, you know, the people that are going to come out, uh, as real successes in the podcasting sphere, from the, from the, from the business side, um, are the sort of scrappier people, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, that, the, the, you know, that start as podcasters, the, the people that, that, that are, you know, interested and invested in building podcasts sort of one and not, and not these big, and not bigger companies that are looking. looking at podcast as some sort of tech innovation. Right?

I mean, as it's, you know, and you related it to old media, it's sort of podcast straddle the ground between old media and new media. But I think that it doesn't surprise me that some big sort of tech side companies are,

you know, made a big investment in podcasts and are now seeing that that's not, it's not paying off in the, you know, in the multiples of money that they, that they expect everything to. but I don't think that it's necessarily a death knell for the form. I mean,

I mean, anyone who is, you know, picked up their iPhone today could, you know, verify that it's not. Yeah, and I got a,

I got a catalog from Simon & Schuster last week, and two of the books were based on podcast, including Dirty John, the L.A. Times, popular L.A. does podcast. Yeah.

It's, I was sort of when I was, when I read about the podcast bubble, I kind of wonder, like, what is the bubble we're talking about? Was the bubble that everybody was making a ton of money? via podcasting or was the bubble just that everybody had a podcast, which I, and I kind of think

it's more the latter. I think there was this like explosive growth in the number of podcasts with this kind of, you know, silver lining kind of, oh, you know, it's got to be the, you know, boy, it's going to save our ailing media companies. But I don't, I don't know that, you know, when we talk about like the bubble, you had, you know, something like a serial become a sensation. you had people like Bill and Mark Marin who've been involved so long in its slate to name another example that have been in it for years and years

driving a sort of business but I don't know do we ever actually reach bubble stage I think it's just kind of a stage of this is something else journalists do and this contributes in some moderate way to their company's bottom line yeah I mean it's just sort of the internet

in a microcosm right I mean it's there's it's everywhere everybody listens to podcasts. Nobody stops to think that like, you know, if stamps.com are really paying anything to be advertising on these and they certainly, then, you know, they either couldn't afford to be on every podcast or they'd be a trillion dollar in company, you know, the money is all is all very vague. And certainly it's not, you know, with with with with very few exceptions, podcasts aren't monetized in the way that old media was for that sort of, you know, instant return. But, um, Yeah, I think that there's just a disconnect between the prevalence of podcasts and the lives of the people who would be listening to this podcast, obviously. Maybe not so for all of our extended families. And, you know, their relative value in the new media world. So there was some reasons suggested by Matthew Enggerman, Columbia Journalism Review, why we fit this bump in the road or whatever it is. One, he says the one obvious answer is the glut of supply.

in 2015, a list of must listen podcasts was 200 items long. I love it. Must listen. You were deficient as a human being and media consumer. If you're not listening to 200 podcasts. Ingram goes on to say, as often happens whenever the crowd moves in mass into a new format, the quality of podcasting also suffered. That is inevitably true.

Minus Jim Cunningham and our excellent team here at the Ringer. David Beard and Pointer writes, another take from a veteran podcast where there are too many podcasts coming out for the limited ad pool. And although listenership is reported as rising, it's difficult to measure actual listeners and the breakout hits are few and far between. How many, by the way, can we, if we ever do a full accounting of the podcast bubble, can we go, to me, the bubble is people tweeting, oh my gosh, we're number one on iTunes for the new podcast for like one day or one second. Thanks to everybody for listening and subscribing. And then we just have a whole list of those

and then go back and see which ones are actually still in business, because that'd be fun. I feel like that's every podcast. It's great. It's that that fleeting feeling that you've conquered something without really realizing that the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain is just whatever iTunes algorithm allowed you to get up there for a second. Mass Man Show did that.

Oh. Oh, yeah, it did. I haven't framed on my wall. Don't get it twisted. And we're still here. Yeah, well, that's still in business. For now. To make one business side point,

I mean, I used to, long ago, I worked for a publishing company, and it started off as, in book publishing, we started off as a regular publishing operation. They were editors and publicists and marketers and we did that. And then the company acquired other publishing companies and then eventually grew and grew and acquired their own distributor and, and, you know, bought one of the big independent book, you know, distributors in the country. And then eventually realized that that was where the real money was. And, uh, and making these books, it was just a sort of marginal return and,

and, um, ended up becoming, you know, the real, they realized the, you know, they realized the, the real money was just in distributing everybody else's books. They became a distributor, a much bigger distributor than the one that they had bought. And, you know, for better or worse, the publishing was just sort of, you know, part of what they did to sort of legitimize the distributing. And I think that you see that in what Slate's doing. I mean, I'm not saying that specifically what they're doing, although that is what they say, they say the game plan is. But I think part of what, I said Slate, I should say Panoply. I think part of what Panoply's plan is, is, and there's some of this in BuzzFeed's decision, too.

is that as a tech company, you have to keep turning these big, you have to keep promising these big returns. And sort of pivoting to the, you know, the tech side or the distribution side, the delivery side, away from the kind of nuts and bolts editorial side, makes a lot of sense from a, you know, from a just sort of standard business operations perspective, even if it's a little bit craven or heartless or something. All right, David, quick follow-ups from last week's podcast. We talked about the,

oh, yeah. The Jan Gameshi business and the furor over the New York Review of Bookspe's while Ian Baruma has left his job, sort of unclear whether he resigned or was fired. He told a Dutch magazine, VRIJ, no, I wasn't fired. He also said the staff was initially not unanimously positive about publication, but once a decision to publish was made, we agreed. And the publisher was initially positive. he felt forced to resign.

He said, and this I thought was kind of interesting, he said, no, he didn't fire me of the publisher, but he made clear to me that university publishers whose advertisers make publication of the New York Review Books partly possible was threatening a boycott. They are afraid of the reactions on the campuses where this is an inflammatory topic. Because of this, I feel forced to resign. In fact, it is a capitulation to social media and the university presses. Now, have you ever heard of a university? press referred to in such a way. Oh my gosh. I have fallen to the

under the thumb of the University of Oklahoma Press, which is force me. Oxford. Oxford is, you know, the punishing and unremitting. Don't even get me started on those domestic terrorists at Swanee University Press, man. Is that even a university?

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I'm going to ride this hobby horse at the sunset that, you know, you, you can't conduct your magazine via think piece, right? It is, it is a living collection of people. And, you know, if you go all in on this one and people that work for you don't, don't like it, you know, you're not going to be the editor anymore. That's just not how these things work. And Bob Silver's, I read had a 54-year run, the helm of the New York Review of Books. Ian Baruma had a one-year run at the head of the New York

review a book. So there you go. Oh, man. We also had this, on the same topic, John MacArthur of Harper's, gave an absolutely strange interview defending his own publications piece about first person piece from John Hockenberry. That was, we'll link to it on the press box Twitter account. That was one of the odder things I have ever seen where he accused the Canadian interviewer of having a Soviet tone, after which point the interviewer asked him

have you ever worked in the Soviet Union because I have. Also, it should be noted that Rick MacArthur cannot be fired from Harper's, so we'll just touch on this interview. But yeah, it was the most bizarre. One of the, clearly, I did not expect, I did not expect him to outdo

Baruma's slate interview in terms of just tone-deaf bizarreness. but he managed to. Absolutely. And also telling, by the way, that you sent him out, the president of the company, president owner of Harper's,

rather than any of the editorial employees. That is a sign, if nothing else is how popular that piece was inside the magazine. All right, that's the press box for this week. Our producer is Jim Cunningham, Chris Almeida. Helped us with research.

David and I will be back with more hot takes about the media next week. See you later, David. See you, man. God's name did you make of that? Just at the risk of being totally pedantic about this. Please. What was your first reaction to this?

I've got lots of stuff to say. But what was your first reaction when you saw it? This is like Grandpa's first message board. You know, you see the temptation of it. I see the temptation of it too. I totally understand it. You're an idiot. Figure out why, right?

On that note of hopelessness contact, David's agent, please, with any offers. Minus Jim Cunningham. Exactly. Thank you.