The Press Box - Covering Kobe, Six Days Till Iowa, and Super Bowl Conspiracies | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the passing of Kobe Bryant (03:00), Joe Rogan’s endorsement of Bernie to the Bernie freakout (26:30), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s interview with NPR (35:30), plus Super Bowl conspiracy theories (40:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David is in Brooklyn and I'm on Radio Row at the Super Bowl in Miami. Can I set the scene for you a little bit, David? Please do. I am at this freestanding table. Everybody from Stefan Diggs to Mina Kimes is milling around doing random interviews with all the sports radio stations of America. but this is the only place on Radio Row where you're going to hear the words John Bolton

over the next four days. The only place is not coming up anywhere else. On today's show, we're going to talk about the Iowa caucuses, which are six days away. And we catch you up on everything from Joe Rogan's endorsement to Bernie to the Bernie centrist freakout. We'll talk about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blowing his top in an interview with NPR

plus Super Bowl conspiracy theories. But David, we got to start with Kobe. As everybody knows, the former Los Angeles Laker and eight other passengers died in a helicopter crash on Sunday afternoon. It was one of those stories that just made everything stop. I think there's probably only a handful of things that would just make the whole sports world and probably rest of the world come to a halt. I kind of wanted to talk about covering Kobe with you. Two ways. first of all during his life

I saw that Adrian Woznarowski posted a picture on Instagram of him walking with Kobe to the team bus back when Kobe was still playing and Woge wrote I owe a great deal of my NBA reporting career to Kobe Bryant who gave me credibility because of his trust that was one of the themes that really came out in the obituaries this week was the number of reporters who were able to gain his trust and had their careers enriched because of it.

I think of Baxter Holmes. Thinking of Howard Beck, thinking of Jonathan Abrams, he was a guy who really, I think toward the latter end of his career, really confided in people. And that is kind of an interesting thing. And it's funny because, you know, here we are in this tragic occasion.

And those are the writers who are, I think, celebrating Kobe's career maybe the most. Yeah. I mean, certainly there's an element of getting to know him on a personal level. Obviously, like you said, with Wojj, there's the sort of benevolence that allowed them the careers that they have, at least to some degree. I think in some ways that stands that stands in contrast to what many of the rest of us are feeling I think there's a lot of different elements

to considering Kobe Bryant and his legacy and everything but I feel like the initial reaction was like you said it was staggering right and I mean and I think that and so many people feel feel that way. I mean, my wife texted me immediately, and she doesn't watch basketball. I mean,

she watches, you know, basketball only when forced by me, and that's very, very rarely. He had the, he had the, I mean, it's almost funny because you could, you could, you could have argued his place in the basketball pantheon endlessly, a week, you know, three days ago. And now, I mean, but upon, but at the moment that you heard that he died, it was clear that he has a level of, celebrity and cultural significance and just larger than lifeness that is reserved for the rarest of the rare.

And I think that's that to me, the kind of the unspooling of that since his tragic death and also obviously his daughters and other people in the helicopter. I mean, that's been a kind of interesting thread to follow. Yeah, it's totally true because I think if we

had just done the assessing Kobe pod two weeks ago, we would have talked about where he is in the top 10 NBA players of all time, and we would have underestimated his cultural impact. And I think there's a couple reasons for that. One is that he just played a really long time. And Kobe touched multiple generations. I mean, you and I, when Kobe started playing,

you and I had newly graduated from high school, we aren't young. Yeah. So he reaches past generations. I also think he reaches into multiple media generations. One of the interesting things you saw with those memorials that Palo Getti wrote about so wonderfully in the ringer

was people were bringing copies of Sports Illustrated with Kobe Bryant on the cover. Somebody who saves that issue of Sports Illustrated is not of this generation, right? That's a long time ago. And that was touching to me to just see how many ways he's been in it. Now he's creating content for the web

and doing other things later in his life. So that was big. It was also, I think, just, Bill touched on this a little bit, but his, the love for Kobe Bryant in the city of Los Angeles in particular was absolutely off the charts. And I live there now.

You live there for a while. I just, I don't even think I had any sense of it until Sunday afternoon how deep and big and intense it was. No, I mean, listen, so much of what we, the way we discuss things is through a sort of very modern and jaded lens, especially when we're talking about sports media, we're already a couple steps removed from the subject matter. But I think it, you know, if we had discussed Kobe a week ago or a month ago, I think it would have been easy to sort of, you know, joke around about his

post-playing businesses or like, you know, his, about the, what was the, what's his, what's his new catchphrase or his latest one? The muse cage or, you know, whatever. I mean, like, there's a lot of things that are easy just to take at face value and to kind of and and and and to not really understand. Not try to understand. I think it, you know, and just being in Los Angeles, Kobe's presence, you know, his influence was was obvious and yet it was a little bit easy to dismiss that too. It's just sort of like, you know, the Lakers fans' obsessions with Kobe was sort of part and parcel with like the permanent state of depression of all the Knicks fans that I knew, you know, and it was easy to sort of downplay his real cultural significance.

And I think it's not just the Los Angeles. I mean, listen, his impact on, there's been a lot of really good pieces written already by L.A. base and people who grew up in L.A. about the influence Kobe had on their lives and their culture and then, you know, the way that he affected the way they grew up in Los Angeles or lived in Los Angeles. But I think what, you know, another thing that's been commented on that's really, I think that's really significant is the way he directly influenced the current generation of NBA players. They all wanted to be Kobe Bryant in a way that even though everybody wanted to be like Mike,

you know, to use the catchphrase back in the day, Kobe was like Mike. But his generation didn't largely understand all the lessons that Michael Jordan brought, right? I mean, for better or worse, there weren't a lot of basketball players of the generation after Michael Jordan who looked at Michael Jordan and said, I'm going to dress like him, right? or I'm going to present myself to the public like him every single day. And a lot of them weren't given that opportunity. But Kobe Bryant almost translated Michael Jordan for the generation that came after him. I guess the biblical parallel would be Paul the Apostle or whatever.

That like Michael Jordan was a game changer. Kobe Bryant was the person that all the other basketball players were able to look at and say that's the way that this is supposed to be done. And he was just, he just influenced so much. you can see just in the reaction of ballplayers top to bottom that he was so much more significant, I think, that we in the media, especially we who lived through

Michael Jordan's prime, could ever have really understood. I was saying the conversation I had with Woage now probably a year, year and a half ago. When Woge was becoming Woj when he was at Yahoo and he was still building, one of the things is he wasn't a pure information guy yet. He would still go

to like a basketball game and do kind of a write-up of the game and then add some intel onto it. And the thing he sort of started to do, and this was I think, you know, he would even agree that this added rocket fuel to his career was that he convinced Kobe Bryant to let him walk with Kobe from the locker room to the team bus and give him inside dope that he could use for a column that no one else would have in the locker room. And Kobe was interested in doing that. And I think at least on some level, I don't want to over romanticize it here, but I think on some level Kobe was interested in that because he was intellectually interested in it. It wasn't just, this is good for me to have writers who, you know, I can give information to and have my side of story out there. But I am actually interested in this process. And I was talking to him amazingly now in December.

that Stewart Scott's story I did. And I don't want to make this about me at all, but what was so fascinating to me was I reached out, he immediately agreed to do the interview. He was great in the interview, and he was legitimately engaged in the topic. Like, he brought up, you know, and sort of asked me like,

did Stuart Scott encounter resistance at ESPN? And I said, yeah, he didn't. And he started asking me questions about that. And you could tell that he and whatever, stage he was in late in his life where he was like, I'm a creative person, you know, muse cage, I'm creating things, I'm thinking about the whole act of creativity. He was like, I just want to know about how this guy's creativity was stifled. And he was totally. And again, when you interview a celebrity, how rare is it that, one, they're engaged in the interview at all.

but two, that they're engaged in what you're actually saying and want to understand it for themselves rather than slough off a few quotes. So I just think he was unique, to some extent, anyway, he was unique in that way. Yeah. I mean, I think that's definitely, I mean, without a doubt, I mean, it's really interesting to hear that story. And I think that, you know, I mean, his influence on media members is probably not the most significant part of his life or his career. but I do think that that is a window into, you know, his deeper self or his, you know, his humanity. Although, you know, there's a lot of humanity's an interesting subject, I guess, when we get into Kobe Bryant. Yep.

You know, I mean, I guess as a media podcast, it's sort of hard to not to not get into this. I mean, there's, you know, there's the, the, I wouldn't even say like the second, the second level of conversation. Like, immediately the, the conversation turned into, I mean, about his death turned into, why are we not addressing the sexual assault, you know, charges allegations or his admission to them from years and years ago? It's a valid question. It was a little bit, I don't know that there is a right or wrong way to address that issue. I know for a fact there's not a right or wrong. There's not a right way to like bring that up on, you know, on Twitter or anywhere else. But, you know, that certainly has been the conversation, not just about why that conversation. not just about those issues, but about why that conversation is or isn't happening, I think, has become, has almost swallowed the, in a lot of corners, the entire story about his past. And it wasn't surprising, was it? No. Not just because that is such a big and freighted conversation that we're having in all media right now, but because grieving is messy. And grieving is, doesn't go down a straight line. And there's no reason that media grieving or however we transatlantic, or however we trans, admit grief through the media and through Twitter and social media and all that stuff would be any less messy, right? If you've been to a funeral, there are people there saying, we need to celebrate this person's life full stop. And there are people at the funeral saying, hey, but what about

XYZ? It may not be as serious as what Kobe was accused of, but that's just the way people grieve. And they think of things differently. This expressed itself most, I think, David, with this Washington host case, just to catch people up. 2003, when Kobe Bryant was in Colorado, he was accused of sexual assault. He wasn't convicted, but he later released a statement saying of his accuser, although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual. I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. That was written about at various times.

When Kobe won an Oscar a few years ago, that was a big deal. And that conversation came back to the four. Felicia Sanmez, reporter for the Washington Post, tweeted out a daily beast story on Sunday about that sexual assault allegation. A segment of the population, as you pointed out, got very angry that we were having the conversation at that moment. Somnez wrote that 10,000 people literally have commented and emailed me with abuse and death threats. According to the Washington Post, Eric Wemple, Sanmez included an image of her email inbox, containing the names of the people who participated in the pushback. Sanmez then sent links to her tweets to her bosses,

and according to an email she gave to the New York Times, Post editor Marty Barron emailed her and said, Felicia, a real lack of judgment to tweet this, please stop, you're hurting this institution by doing it. And then she got suspended. While the post, it said, looked into her tweets and the whole matter of news judgment. What did you make of that whole situation

in the way it played out? I mean, there's a, I just have a hard time getting past Marty Barron sending that email. The Washington Post suspending her. I mean, I assume that action is sort of those two actions are the same action. I'm not sure what any, I mean,

it doesn't, none of it may, none of it is right. None of it makes any sense. It's just, how you can be in Marty Perrin's position and not see that what you're doing is just sort of like a worse version of what you're accusing the other person of doing of like acting so impulsively or whatever

I mean obviously he wasn't tweeting and these two things and she was not in fact acting impulsively but that's what he perceived um it's just it's just wild and by the way I mean just we don't need to like dwell in the details but the merits of the case that the idea that she was being penalized because it was outside of her, the area of coverage or whatever, that's just nonsense.

I mean, it's like, that's like the opposite of the truth, right? I mean, it should be much less significant that, like, you know, I said it here, that like if a culture podcaster at the ringer tweeted out something about that, it would have much less significance than if, like, Kevin O'Connor did, right? I mean, it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't line up. And you're just grasping at straws now for excuses or rationales for this deeply disturbing thing that you did. By the way, she's like, checked into a hotel because her,

Twitter responses have her worried for her safety and your response is to suspend her. I mean, just like, even if she had done something that was actionable or something that she'd been warned against in the past or something like that, like, that's not how you deal with that in real time right then. And to, I don't know, I mean, I don't know. This is certainly, like, it's just, it's just sort of everything about where we are in the media age right now that, like, the most outrageous thing is like three degrees separated from the actual tragedy that we're trying to wrestle with.

But it's just, it's just a despicable thing for a paper that's so concerned with carrying its mantle of, of democracy dies in darkness. Yeah, thanks, Chris. I mean, just for the, for the, for a, for a, for a newspaper in the position that it's in right now in so many ways to be acting so idiotically. And listen, to be, probably to be acting in response to, just the impulses of some of the worst actors on the internet.

It's just sad, you know? It's just sad to see. And to make things worse, the Post Union News Guild released a statement that said this. This is not the first time that the post is sought to control how Felicia speaks on matters of sexual violence. Felicia herself is a survivor of assault who bravely came forward with their story two years ago.

And they're telling her you can't tweet that. about Kobe Bryant, tweeting, by the way, linking dispassionately to a news story. Didn't add any commentary to it at all. I agree with everything you said. The one thing I'd add is I think when the post says you're tweeting outside your subject area, that to me is a very old newspaper attitude of saying, we have this story in front of us and everything is about procedure and everything is about old newspaper quote unquote news judgment, right? Like the big question was, right, if you write an obituary of Kobe Bryant, where does the sexual assault allegation go? Is it in the fifth paragraph? By the way, that was the actual

answer for the New York Times. Is it in the seventh paragraph? Is it in the second paragraph? And when she tweeted that on Sunday afternoon, I think in the eyes of certain newspaper editors, that was just getting things out of order, right? It was taking. It was taking. it out of their control. They're sitting there deciding where are we going to put this. I'm not defending this practice, by the way. I just think that's the way they were thinking. We're making this very kind of freighted decision about where we put that. And then you put it on Twitter and you're sort of putting it in the first graph for us. You know, you're making that judgment on the side of the paper. Like I said, I think that's nuts. And I think you can run a no bit of Kobe

and have the tweet and it's fine. No, I mean, I think that's instructive just in so much as like, not this doesn't defend any anything that any the post did but yeah if you look at it in terms of like someone at your paper sort of pulling out you know doing the thing that people do on Twitter all the time this revelation in paragraph 11 should have been the A1 story what were they thinking um i mean i guess i can see that you know whatever the reacts i mean i can see why someone would react to it in some way but the reaction itself had that really not that wasn't what was at stake and the reaction even so was just so outsized compared to what was tweeted. There were a lot of strange things that happened in the coverage.

I give you an MSNBC hosts who said something that sounded a lot like the N word on the air and had to apologize. I give you an ABC News reporter who reported that all of Kobe Bryant's daughters were killed in the crash, which was not true. I give you the trending topic section of Twitter, which for some reason, God knows why, posted a picture of Jeffrey Epstein with the Kobe News. I give you the BBC, which put together a LeBron James highlight package to go with the news of Kobe Bryant's death. All that aside, I read Margaret Sullivan's column, The Washington Post, and she said that the coverage was mostly characterized by the drive to be first at all costs, by sloppy and damaging mistakes, and by the failure of judgment.

I just want to push back on mostly there. I think if you read the vast majority of tweets, which were just people saying what Kobe Bryant meant to them, the vast majority of news reports, whether they're on television, on podcasts, in the actual paper, I don't think that's,

I don't think that's the case. And absolutely we should pounce on those errors. absolutely we should make light of them and the reporters should have to deal with them in some way because you get paid not to make mistakes like that. But to say that the coverage of Kobe Bryant was mostly terrible, I just don't, I'm sorry, I don't feel that way at all. And I don't think, I think there's a thing that what happens is whenever we have a fast moving news story and there are mistakes, everybody writes this absolutely just generic. column about oh well you know these days it's all about getting it first people are rushing stuff into print that's been the entire history of journalism has been about that yeah i'm sorry we want to go look at some newspapers from the 1960s and see and see that they don't have mistakes and they

had a whole day to write it yeah i mean give me a break and this this always happens this is what happens when you have absolutely shocking news that is very that turns into by the way a very, very competitive story. Stuff's going to happen and it doesn't mean that it's all trash. Yeah, I mean, I was watching flipping back and from the news channels, you know, as they were covering it live and the moment's immediately following it. And the coverage wasn't great, but it was, it was necessary, right? I mean, the reporter on MSNBC or the anchor on MSNBC, who, you know, you mentioned earlier, I think I'm inclined to believe the apology. because I was listening in real time,

and it really just sounded like someone who hadn't said the word Lakers out loud in their life ever, right? I mean, there were a lot of people who were sort of, this is the weekend desk or whatever at these TV news stations that were suddenly forced in the position

of having to cover the death of one of the world's most famous professional athletes. And it was hard to even get, like, talk, you know, appropriate, like, reporters on the phone to talk about it, you know, to really, like, gauge the significance of it. Thankfully, Mike Tariko was out there doing yeoman's work, like, trying to get on as many places as he could.

but like, you know, it's a tough story to cover for all the reasons we've discovered, and we've discussed. And it was, you know, really, really hard to cover something. It's always hard to cover something of that level of significance in real time. And the fact that Kobe Bryant in particular has such a deeper level of significance and resonance to such a huge audience of people that makes the job even harder. Now, I mean, there were certainly missteps. You know, I could not, like I was keeping it running tally.

of the number of reporters who were dragged on the screen who were there to talk about the Grammys or who were on site to talk about the Grammys that suddenly had to talk about why music's biggest night was now about something different. They said music's biggest night

literally every time someone talked about the Grammys. But like there was but overall I think you're right. I mean I think that the coverage was as good as good as could be expected and to kind of harp on the harp on it like that I think is well I mean I think it's almost as easy as the as what you're accusing all the you know the

journalism you know writ large of there is one thing that came up a couple of times which was ESPN was showing the Pro Bowl when this all happened and they didn't cut away from the pro bowl Kobe coverage aired on ESPN 2 for the most part until the game was over um I didn't get too terribly worked up about this but I'm not sure there's a bigger there's a more sort of striking illustration of ESPN being pulled in two directions, again, as they always have, between the network that wants to be in partnership with the leagues and by rights to show games, which I am sure they are contractually obligated to show, and the network that wants to be a new source, in a really good news source. And if there was ever a moment where we saw those two things

pulling them in different directions, it was the death of Kobe Bryant. Yeah. And it was, you know, do we, can we stop showing this football game that nobody cares about, but does get a quite large rating, especially when you compare it to almost any NBA postseason game, or do we go full news? You know, can we, can we do that? And the decision was no, and I don't think it was coincidental that ABC News then had an hour long Kobe Bryant special on prime time that night. hosted by Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan and their big stars as probably a way of you know compensating for that

to a point but it was a really it was it was again I don't know that I'm going to go you know get outraged and pound on the wall or anything but it was if you want to see where what ESPN is dealing with by its very existence

check out its decision or non-decision on Sunday afternoon. And by the way, what would it feel like, again, they are not the victims here, but talk about putting people in a bad position, Joe Tessator and Bougar McFarland,

having to call the rest of that game. Can you imagine what like the second half of the third quarter of the Pro Bowl was like when the rest of the nation and basically the entire sports world is grieving and talking about something else? Just, ooh, that must have been odd.

David, why don't we call off the Overward Twitter joke of the week this week, or at least today. We will get back to it Thursday. Let's do the notebook dump. I want to talk to you about Iowa. David, there are six days to the Iowa caucuses. Six days.

Then what do we do? I remember when you and I were talking about this and, yeah, I know, I don't know. I think we're canceled after that. Whatever happens Monday, this is going to be remembered as Bernie's going to win a week. Yeah.

This is the week where people who want Bernie to win started to really believe, and people who don't want Bernie to win absolutely freaked out. I think the boomload was fueled by two things. One, the endorsement from podcaster slash ultimate fighting commentator slash voice of the voiceless Joe Rogan. Let's listen to a little bit of that. Who you can vote for in the primary? I think I think I'll probably vote for Bernie. Him as a human being when I was hanging out with him.

Yeah. I believe in him. I like him. I like him a lot. What Bernie stands for is a guy who, well, look, you could dig up dirt on every single human being that's ever existed if you catch them in their worst moment and you magnify those moments and you cut out everything else and you only display those worst moments. That said, you can't find very many with Bernie.

he's been insanely consistent his entire life. He's basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from. Second thing, of course, that Bernie got a bunch of good polls. But should we talk about the Rogan thing for a second?

Because Bernie not only accepted the Rogan endorsement, what he leaned into it, blew it out. You saw this part of polite political Twitter sort of jump up and say, okay, you can accept Rogan, but you shouldn't be

sort of, you shouldn't be, you know, putting this in a Twitter ad because of offensive opinions that Joe Rogan has had over the years. What do you make of that? How should Bernie have dealt with Rogan sort of putting his hands on him

and saying, this is my guy? Oh, man. you know I go back and forth on sort of the discussion in Rogan in general I think that a lot of you know the things that is just detractor say about Rogan or more saliently about Rogan's audience I think they can be true at times and I don't and I think it's it's silly to dismiss

those sorts of you know critiques out of hand and yet I think that the side that's trying to dismiss Rogan is being much more petty, I mean reductivist. I mean,

it's Joe Rogan is, I mean, and listen, we all, I mean, it's impossible to talk about Joe Rogan without like kind of getting in dismissive territory, right? Like the way you introduced him, which is the same way I probably would have done it, is by this kind of, kind of list of, uh, semi funny, uh, job titles or whatever that when strung together, make him seem like less, less than a significant like commentator. But like, Joe Rogan's one of the

most important voices in America today, right? And that's not something that like, that's a better way to describe him. And that's not something that like, that you can just sort of like, like, just, you know, shrug off. And it's not something that you should, you know, I mean, if like, if you're that, if you're deeply concerned about Joe Rogan's like, evil influence on the masses, then like, let's do some research. Let's get in the trenches, you know? I mean, actually do, like, try to, like, explain why. If it's just that, like, he attracts a sort of, like, near-do-well audience or whatever, well, I mean, that's, like, kind of, like, I get that

that there are, like, parts of, there are voices on the internet that, regardless of what they're trying to do, attract a sort of, like, part, a sort of listenership that, that renders them in the sort of, like, cancel column. But he's not strictly one of those. He has too many people that listen to him. I've listened to him with great regularity at various points in my life. and even though I don't anymore, I still talk to people on the regular

who are just like, I listen to him, people who are like, I only listen to him, but I listen to him, but I listen to him, but only when he's like having a wackadoo conversation with like, you know,

a futurist or something. Or, you know, but he has an incredible impact, right? And to just say like, oh, it's only Joe Rogan. Or, or, yes, it's Joe Rogan, but you shouldn't make a big deal about that Bernie Sanders. I mean,

like people are more animated about Joe Rogan, about Joe Rogan's endorsement, than they are about some of like the like the like the like the like the like the like the like the like the little crook christian pastors who like who like who have who have who endorsed don't trump and all the republican candidates before him like people like people who are like actively out there trying to hurt people trying to like like like pray the gay away and doing worse and like and and we're just like oh we just can't worry about that because for whatever reason but like there are so many worse people we accept their endorsements from except their

money from we're getting animated by joe rogan just shows like how much that you just spent way too much time on Twitter for the last five years of your life if you think that's that big of a problem with what's going on. It does feel to me, it's funny you mentioned the ministers. Didn't this feel like a Republican, a problem the Republicans often have that the Democrats are having? Like you remember when everybody would accept the endorsement of John Hagee or somebody like that? Exactly who I was picturing in my head, by the way.

Yeah, go on. Yeah. And we'd have the role. of controversial statements, like, okay, you've accepted his, do you agree with X, Y, and Z? That's essentially what the reaction was like to Rogan. And again, I'm not equating those two things,

and please don't think I am, but human rights campaign, right? Really statement saying Rogan has attacked transgender people, gay men, women, people of color, and countless marginalized people at every opportunity. It was interesting to me that the defenses of Rogan did not seem to be really engaging with Rogan so much as engaging with, like, political,

strategy. People saying, look, you're trying to win people that abandon the Democratic Party in 2016 and voted for Trump. So this is a way to win those people back, right? You want, you, you may not like everything this person says, but you are trying to, you're trying to, you're trying to find those voters. Ezra Klein tweets, Obama actively courted a lot of racially resentful and conservative of voters. Right before the 08 election, he made a huge deal of Colin Powell's endorsement, despite Powell helping push America into the Iraq war. That was kind of a weird analogy, by the way. But he adds, whatever Obama was, he wasn't a practitioner of purity politics. If you are a political reporter or someone just interested in politics and you still find

yourself or found yourself three years ago asking questions like, how could anybody be a Bernie, have been a Bernie voter and then pivoted to being a Trump voter, maybe you should be listening to the Joe Rogan podcast. on a more regular basis because the answer is right there in front of you. I just, I think too that all of this is amplified by the general freak out. The Bernie's going to win freak out. Yes. That's happening. Because centurists have all of a sudden realized they may have just made a terrible mistake,

which is they took all their, all their ammo that was intended for Bernie, and they dumped it on Elizabeth Warren. And they may have succeeded in stopping Elizabeth Warren's candidacy after her high point through the summer and early fall. But they have cleared a lane for Bernie Sanders to win the nomination. And if that turns out to be the case here, dude, that is incredible. Because there's a there's a path for Bernie to win Iowa on Monday, turn around and win New Hampshire, a state he figures to do well in any way. and then win the Nevada caucuses. And then what happens?

Is Mike Bloomberg walking through that door? If you're a centrist Democrat, I don't think so. You're looking at the next, you're looking at in all likelihood that nominee of the Democratic Party is going to be Bernie Sanders in that case. If you're in that centrist section of the party right now, worry not because Jonathan Shade already has a call him out today.

titled Running Sanders Against Trump would be an active insanity. So don't worry, Chate's got your back. Remember when Centress were mild people? Yeah, I just looked at Twitter today and it's, I never knew Citrus could be this angry. I really didn't. I mean, we are, we are just, who. And by the way, if Bernie wins Iowa, just wait.

It's going to get worse. Six days till Iowa, people. This is incredible. David, I want to talk to you about Mike Pompeo. He is the Secretary of State. He was on NPR being interviewed by Mary Louise Kelly. Sounds simple, right? It wasn't.

Listen to this. It's a great team. The team that works here is doing amazing work around the world. I've defended every single person on this team. I've done what's right for every single person on this team. Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Maria Vovic? I've said all I'm going to say today. Thank you.

Thanks for the repeated opportunity to do. So I appreciate that. One further question on this. I'm not going to. I appreciate that. I appreciate you. I want to continue to talk about this. I agreed to come on your show today to talk about it.

And you appreciate that the American public wants to know as a shadow foreign policy. Pompeo ended the interview after that. Kelly then was summoned to what the New York Times called Pompeo's private living room. I think I want to know more about that. Pompeo shouted at her for some amount of time. he said he asked do you think the Americans care about Ukraine Time says he used an F word in that sentence so it probably was do you think the Americans fucking care about Ukraine or care about fucking Ukraine one of those two

Kelly then said that Pompeo asked AIDS to bring a map a world map with none of the countries marked on it to which many people on Twitter asked does the Secretary of State just have these lying around can we get can we get an unlabeled map in here open the file drawer and get one out is that like do they do geography quizzes at the department of state he asked Kelly to point out Ukraine

she did then he proceeded to vent further claimed that the conversation was only going to be about Iran their second conversation the private living room was off the record he sort of employed that Kelly hadn't found Ukraine on the map Kelly said bullshit to the second and third charges there and then had emails that revealed Pompeo was not telling a truth about the first.

What did you make of this whole very, very strange encounter? First of all, I'd like to take exception to your assertion that it doesn't matter where the curse word landed in that sentence because I do fucking care about Ukraine, but I do not care about fucking Ukraine. No, but it's just, it's just, I mean, I know we say this every week. I know we say this, or twice a week. Imagine if this happened in any other administration. Imagine if the Secretary of State went on NPR and had a breakdown because they perceived that, or they were under the assumption that the most significant foreign affairs issue in the nation's interest was not going to be discussed. and then when it was they threw a hissy fit

and tore down and and tore and tried to tear into the the interviewer which on its own even if everything was right to call an interviewer into your little green room or whatever and just start and just start running them down thinking I mean there's no upside to this right like you're like you're you're

so surrounded by petty tyrants that you turn into one yourself I guess like what like the only positive thing that could possibly come out of this is Mike Pompeo feeling 2% better about himself after going on NPR and presumably like feeling like he made himself look like an ass and his boss was going to hear it.

It's so... You hit it, but you hit it right there. There is one positive thing that's going to come out of this which is that Trump's going to hear about it. That's what it is. And if you read the Pompeo statement afterwards where he called the interview unhinged, by the way, when did unhinged become

the official conservative adjective to describe any portion of the quote unquote liberal media? Why did we land on that one? But if you're auditioning for Donald Trump, that's it, right? That's it. That's the whole point. How many things that Mike Pompeo does every day do you think are just about pleasing Donald Trump?

90%. Yeah. 95%. Well, yeah. It's what he does. I mean, listen, the weird, I totally agree. I mean, the interesting thing is that there's been a not insubstantial amount of Mike Pompeo's like personal volition, humanity

restored just through the sort of craziness of the Iran situation of late, that all the people are sort of suddenly saying like this has been a Mike Pompeo thing for a long time. But yeah, I mean, certainly the perception from where we're sitting is that most everything he does is just,

you know, to please President Trump. Yeah. I think it is. That's how you keep your job. Otherwise, you wind up like Rex Tillerson. By the way, the only time Rex Tillerson

was said today on Super Bowl Radio Row. But maybe not the last. I want to talk about Super Bowl conspiracy theories. Specifically one Super Bowl conspiracy theory. Let's begin by listening to the strange sunbake sounds of 1987. Party, that's who? There's a super party animal. His name is Budz McKenzie.

With the sunshine bright on a cold, but night he's in there. Buds McKenzie, the posh pooch of pop culture. Go, Spuds, go. Spudger and that is former Bud Light mascot, pitch dog.

Spuds McKenzie. Boy, there's so much to unpack about that commercial. First of all, the Robin Leach Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Voice. Yeah. The fact the women in the commercial were pretending to be in love with spuds. Pretending. We bring up Spuds McKenzie, and if you are too young to remember that particular era of American culture, please go to YouTube immediately.

We bring it up because Spuds McKenzie, David, and I know you remember this, spawned an incredible number of Super Bowl conspiracy theories. Oh, yeah. Do you remember the moment in elementary school? like I do where some kid came up to you in line of the cafeteria and said, did you hear that Spuds McKenzie died? Yes. I actually do remember that with great specificity. It would go on?

Yeah. The way I heard it was that he had jumped out of a limo and had been run over. Oh. It was a little. No, that's incorrect. Wait, what? You heard a different way? The story that I heard, this is not rehearsed, guys.

The story that I heard was that he was in a raft or a barfeworthy. boat of some sort filming a Budweiser ad fell out and tried to come up for air underneath the raft and just couldn't get up because he was underneath it and he drowned tragically. Spuds McKenzie did his own stunts. That's the takeaway there. See, I heard it was a limo and I remember years later when I thought about it was like, wait, Spuds McKenzie was being transported around in a limo? Like he was that, he was that biggest star? Like, would he have known the difference if it was a Toyota Tersel or whatever else was available in

1987. Turns out none of this was true. According to people, Spuds McKenzie died at age 10 from kidney failure. Very specific cause of a dog's death. Erica Cervantes, who helps us with research, said that her theory is that Spuds is actually

the target dog, and he's actually alive and well today. He just changed companies like that cell phone guy. That's just not true. I think this is interesting for us, besides being a weird moment in pop culture, is such a different media age where it was impossible, even if you weren't in elementary school,

to immediately check out the rumor. Oh, yeah. And what we would have given for our parents to be able to look up Wikipedia and assure us that Spuds was still alive. Do you just look back? It's amazing. I know now is supposed to be fertile for conspiracy theories,

but man, if you think that, you weren't around 1987, right? Yeah, no, I mean, a couple of things. One, I'm looking at this article right now, this 1987 people article. People have seen to make, has made a sort of cottage industry of chronicling spuds McKinsey, even into the modern era. But it said according, according to this article,

it says he died, the rumors were that he died in a limo crash, another set of plane crash. electrocuted in a hot tub, I believe I heard that one at some point, or drowned while surfboarding, which it must have been what I heard. None of those, I guess, were true. But yeah, these things were widespread. I mean, I hate to be, this feels like a Trump campaign rally, like, just like really empty, like, you know, come on.

But I got to say, man, I was a bit, like, my friends and I would talk about Spuds McKenzie. I cannot, I refuse to believe that a single one of us were, like, encouraged to, drink beer because of our affinity for this cute dog. I had friends who walked around in Joe Camel T-shirts, and I guess I did have friends that were smoking young. I never did. I mean, I was in Louisville, Kentucky, though. Like, people were smoking when they were eight.

But, like, I don't, I just feel like our culture is missing, is really missing something. It's impossible to have a cross-cultural superstar pop culture icon, you know, that your parents love and your dad can wear the shirt and you can wear the shirt. if you can't put funny cartoon, like kids characters on cigarettes and booze. I feel like our country is really missing that right now and it would really help bring us together. All of that said,

Spuds McKenzie was, yeah, I mean, the fact that someone could tell you that he died and you were just like, well, I guess that's true. And then the next time you see a commercial, you're looking to see if the spot around his eyes a little bit different. I mean, I miss those days for sure. I'm seeing here that Spuds returned

to Super Bowl commercialdom in 19 in 2017 and he looks like the Luke Skywalker of Force Ghost and also I guess he was played by someone else so it sort of turned into like a college mascot thing where there's always a Spuds McKenzie he's just a different Spuds McKenzie sort of fills in what an era of American life God we were so lucky to live through that

David why don't we go ahead and skip the Strain Pine Headline headline too. It's just out of respect. We'll be back to it on Thursday. He is David Schumaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Erica Zervantes and Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian.

Enjoy the Super Bowl.