The Press Box - COVID-19 and Government Power, the ESPN Jordan Doc, and Listener Mail | The Press Box

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker look at the issue of the coronavirus and government power (01:00); the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (19:15); the excitement for the upcoming Michael Jordan documentary, ‘The Last Dance’ (24:15); and listener mail (41:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. We hope The Ringer can provide you entertainment and companionship during this time. So as always, feel free to check out The Ringer.com, where we're still covering the latest in sports, pop culture, tech, and media. And the Ringer's YouTube channel can provide endless amounts of entertainment. You can find that at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer here. We got a lot of great stuff to get to today. we'll talk about whether ESPN's Michael Jordan documentary

can save sports fans, a TV network, and humanity more generally. We'll answer your listener mail questions, including which three media members would you like to spend quarantine with. Plus, David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, as we enter a truly awful period of the coronavirus pandemic here in the United States, I want to start with an issue that is manifesting. itself here and all over the world.

For weeks and months, politicians bumbled around and did nothing about coronavirus. Now they're doing everything. Maybe in certain cases, too much. So let's talk about an important, tricky issue, the coronavirus and government power. I thought Josie Duffy Rice put it really well in a tweet this week. This pandemic repeats a pattern we've already seen a billion times throughout a American history. The government failed to do its job on the front end and is attempting to make up for that failure through control and criminalization. So that's the first time I saw that quote.

That's, that's amazing. I mean, I think that's, there's probably a lot of truth to that. I've been spending a lot of time on the, you know, the back end on sort of the surface level and not really thinking about the path that led us here. But, but, I mean, it's easy to say from where we're sitting, I guess, because, you know, we've never had untold amounts of powers at our fingertips, although with this, you know, now that we're a Spotify podcast, who knows what the world may bring us. But, but it's just, it's, it seems like you should just be able to say, like, have a checklist on your desk, governors and presidents and everyone else, that if you, if you hit any of like these ten tenants of totalitarianism, maybe you're going down the wrong path.

but I'm sure they think they're doing the right thing at the same time. Let's hit a few examples. Last week, police in Rhode Island began stopping cars with New York plates and demanding the contact information of drivers and passengers. The National Guard was also deployed going door to door looking for New Yorkers and telling them they had to self-quarantine for 14 days or face fines and jail time. The liberal savior Andrew Cuomo said this. We're talking to Rhode Island now. If they don't roll back that policy, I'm going to sue Rhode Island because that clearly is unconstitutional. I understand the goal, and I could set up my borders and say, I'm not letting anyone in until they take a test to see whether or not they have the virus.

But, you know, there's a point of absurdity. and I think what Rhode Island did is at that point of absurdity. And again, it's not even legal. So they're a neighboring state. I'm sure we're going to be able to work it out. That order was revised late Saturday night to say that, quote, any person coming to Rhode Island from another state, not just New York, for a non-work-related purpose, must immediately self-quarantine for 14 days.

Here's Rhode Island Governor Gina Romando on the era of good feelings between government. So I did talk to the governor of New York yesterday. It was after I had already taken my action and we chatted about it. If he feels it's important for him to take credit, go ahead. I'm going to keep working here to keep Rhode Islanders safe. As soon as Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg disappeared from American life, there have been a lot of a lot of democratic political pairs that, have rushed into the void.

Here's another one. Elsewhere in America, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas issued a quarantine order from several places, ranging from California to New Orleans to Detroit. According to Politico,

quote, Abbott directed state troopers to enforce the quarantine order for Louisiana motorists driving into Texas, with authorities slated to collect information from drivers on where they

would isolate themselves for 14 days, with the possibility of unannounced visits to verify compliance, and levy punishment of a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. We've seen in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has targeted New Yorkers and Louisianaans entering his state. Trump himself mused about a quarantine of New York City before backing down again after resistance from Cuomo.

Some of this stuff, David, is sort of arguable. Governor Gavin Newsom out here in California left it up to local sheriffs where their gun stores counted as essential businesses during the pandemic. pandemic. You have the constitutional right to bear arms, but does that mean you have the right to buy a gun right now? In Florida, I'm sure you saw this story. There was this mega church pastor Rodney Howard Brown who said to hell with the orders banning large public gatherings. He had hundreds of parishioners at two services this last Sunday, according to Reuters. He even put them on buses to come to the church. Yeah. Which is not recommended at this time. He said, to the congregation, no plague shall come nigh thy dwelling, no weapon formed against them. He was arrested. So again, you see the tension between these two things. We have the right to bear arms. We have a freedom of assembly.

We have the freedom to worship in this country. But at this moment, those freedoms are being curtailed momentarily, right? Let me give you one more complicating factor in knowledge to come in here. the hard part about this is a lot of us are saying, hey, government officials do something, right? Save us from dying. Save as many people as you can. We want the government to do stuff,

especially because they took so long to do anything. And I thought this was fascinating. Reason pointed to this survey says in a recent survey of 3,000 people, the University of Chicago's Adam Chilton and three other law professors, they found bipartisan agreement that, quote, now is the time to violate the Constitution. Sizable majorities of both Democrats and Republicans favored confining people to their homes, detaining sick people in government facilities, banning U.S. citizens from entering the country, government takeovers of businesses, conscription of health care workers,

suspension of religious services, and even criminalizing the spread of, quote, misinformation about the virus. Even when we explicitly told half of our citizens, sample that the policies may violate the Constitution, Shilton and the other law professors report. The majority supported all eight of them, including speech restrictions. So there's a nub of it, right? Wow. We want to some extent this to happen as a people.

Mm-hmm. And then you begin to grapple, well, okay, well, and maybe some of these things are the right move in the short term. Certainly, you know, there are moments when you want people to be at home rather than mixing with the public. But then what happens afterwards? And what kind of powers are we giving to the people who rule us during this time? There's a lot, a lot in what you just said. Let me just begin with a brief message to megachurch pastor, Rodney Howard Brown. I assume he's not in prison right now.

I thought about this a couple weeks ago when we were talking about Franklin Graham and he was bullshitting on Fox News or Fox business about the president. I'll just keep by like profanity and my my ranting at a minimum except just to say that like I know that you guys probably don't know the Bible very well but like just there are parts of it that are about plagues you know like a little bit of introspection a little bit of like looking like just looking at yourself in the mirror and reviewing those things might lead you to have a little bit of a different conclusion about what's going on if you want to lean on your if you want to lean on the Bible to interpret everything that's going on right now it doesn't always have to be interpret. in your favor, okay? Just like, lean on the parts that actually apply. To the governors that were discussed, I mean, in some ways, I honestly, honestly am thankful for Gina Raimondo because it took an example as severe as that for people to actually kind of get shaken out of their just complacency.

I don't doubt that people responded to, you know, this pollster that they were in favor of violating the Constitution. I wonder what, you know, the actual situation in terms of sequencing of questions and stuff. If someone asked me if I'd be in favor of making sure everybody stayed at home all the time, I might say yes. And then if they said afterwards, that violates a constitution, well, I'm not going to change my mind. You know, I mean, I've already said my answer, but setting that aside. And this is what happens in emergencies, right? We think we want that after 9-11, like, yeah, take care of it. Take care of it, right? Just don't let us die. And that's why I'm saying, I'm happy. I mean, in some sense, yes, yes. I mean, I think a lot of people have probably

heard the story that was passed around a lot this week about this little incident in Maine. It was like a local, like, a gang of, I mean, a gang of locals, like armed vigilantes came and like sawed down a tree. They saw, they noticed some New Jersey plates in the neighborhood came and sawed down a tree to block in the car so that the people from New Jersey were forced to self-quarantine, only to turn out that it was just like two guys from New Jersey who were there for a construction job and it had been living at this house in September. We are all becoming this torch-bearing militia right now. And if this is coming down from the very highest point, listen, I understand the compulsion.

You're right. We do want this. If you look around and you say, well, none of us have it. And if all these people from New York come in and they have it, well, you know, I mean, listen, this is the same reason why people, why they're being like literal hate crimes committed against Asian people right now or for the past several weeks, you know? I mean, it's not defensive. And it's utterly illogical, too. I mean, we've seen over and over again in this country that if you look around and say, hey, none of us have it. The reason for that is because your government's not testing anybody. Your local government or medical facilities aren't testing people. That's why no one has it. It's just ridiculous. And to kind of bring it full circle. Yeah, I mean, we're, some of what Gavin Newsom has said, I mean, some of that stuff's political. I mean, political and understandable. You don't want to be causing more of a hubbub now than you sort of need to. But you're right. We are looking for this in our

government. I think it all sort of just boomerangs back to our central government, our federalized government, who should have been obviously doing a lot of the stuff, taking precautions for much longer than they were. It's becoming clearer and clear if it weren't from the very beginning that, you know, the Trump administration failed at doing a lot of things for fear of spooking the markets. And, I mean, for months and months and months, if you don't believe me, just ask Mike princessa. And now, and in the absence of a guiding hand from the very top, we're left with looking at, you know, looking to our governors to do inhumane things. And we're looking, we're,

you know, looking at other people's governors, looking at, you know, people all over the country watching Andrew Cuomo. And we're just all slightly adrift because, because without any guiding hand, you know, we're looking for, we're looking for an iron fist. That's a, that's a, that's a great way to put it. And it's one of these things. What makes it so difficult is some of the, some of the things that are happening. In fact, probably some things I just listed off are not the wrong idea, right? In this moment, it is probably the right thing to do. At least it's arguable. But then you have to really look at it so that there is an expiration date to this. And maybe it's months and months in the future. Maybe this pandemic is going to be so difficult that it's not for a while, but it has to expire, right?

Because you have to understand, all of us as citizens have to understand what kind of power you're seating to the government, that you would not have seated under normal times. To your point about governors too, part of the reason this is so vexing is that there isn't a federal standard for a lot of this stuff. It has been left up to the states. So Gavin Newsom here in California says, I want to temporarily take this much of your liberty away, whereas Greg Abbott in Texas says, no, no, no, I want to take only this much, right? And that's different. It's a different standard. There's even a different standard within states. Because to your megachurch example, Florida didn't have a statewide stay at home order until Wednesday of this week, which is pretty incredible. But Hillsborough County, where that Tampa Pastor's Church is located, did. So he could be arrested there, but he might not have been arrested elsewhere in Florida. Yeah. For doing the exact same thing. Think about that.

I mean, that is just a mind-blowingly complicated thing. Part of that is there are different parts of the United States right now that seem to require different measures. Another part of it is federal leadership is like zero coming from the White House. And you're right. it all comes back to that thing of you failed to protect us as best you could. Now, oh, overdo it, right? Please, more, more, more protection, right?

Because it was so, that is our natural impulse of citizens, because it was so disjointed to non-existent at the beginning. But, I mean, it could be that that's what's, despite what people want, saying they want it via the Constitution, there might be some silver lining in the fact that Trump is still so maniacally obsessed with the markets that there's not a single bit of him that's inching towards any of these totalitarian impulses, right? I guess. You know,

if you can truly separate out or separate out totalitarian impulse from get us more ventilators and more masks. Yeah. But is it a totalitarian impulse to say, I'm ordering American businesses to manufacture life-saving masks and ventilators, which he was so reluctant to do and has been so reluctant to. to do? No, I mean, that was a sin. And frankly, I am parsaling that out, because you're right. It's a very complicated conversation. I just think that, like, his reticence in some ways

might, I mean, we could all, we could all imagine a different version of this. And thankfully, a lot of these terrible excesses are already being curved and are at least, at least, like I said before, being identified and seen for what they are. We can naval gaze here at the United States, but of course, this same impulse is happening all over the world. The New York Times is Salam Gabrekadan writes that, quote, leaders across the globe are seizing virtually dictatorial authority with scant resistance. Did you see Hungary's Victor Orban? He can now evade parliament and suspend laws. He has suspended elections, cracked down on free expression. I don't want to be the guy who makes the glib pop culture reference, but this is the plot

of the Star Wars prequel. Right. This is what Emperor Palpatine did is what's happening in Hungary. Gabrecadans' rundown includes this. Israel's prime minister has shut down courts and is monitoring citizens with cell phone data usually used for counterterrorism. She writes, quote, Chile has sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters.

Bolivia has postponed elections. Remember South Korea? The model of how to fight coronavirus? Gubrecadan says the country has used, quote, invasive surveillance systems that under normal circumstances would have invited censure. Then you got the UK.

and this is truly weird. Boris Johnson announced some vague rules about what was allowed, somewhat similar to what's happening in this country, and police have reacted in wildly different ways. There's this town called Warrington that started issuing citations for minor acts like, quote, out for a drive due to boredom

and, quote, going to shops for non-essential items. Their police department just tweeted it out. And then you've got cases like in Russia with Vladimir Putin and what a shock that he would use this opportunity to further expand power in that country. I think that the first takeaway here is, and Erdogan would have taken a lot less shit if he had just waited for a pandemic to break out. I mean, this is just an incredible time for just power grabbing, right?

Yeah. Listen, this is instructive. I think that it's easier as it, I mean, at all times, it's easier to look at other countries in point and say at least we're not like that. It's much harder to look in the mirror. Obviously, there are examples of us being like that. We just talk through a lot of them. But just as we're, you know, looking to other countries in terms of the way that coronavirus has been spreading and is operating, is how that's been incredible. That's been really instructive for us, even as lay people sitting at home and Googling around. I think it's,

you know, incredibly instructive to look at some of these, these, these, the, you know, the most galling excesses by foreign governments and saying, you know, watch out. That could happen here too. That's what I think it is, both abroad and here. Because again, it's not that, oh, every non-essential business should be open tomorrow like Trump wanted for a while. And we should all go out in the streets and get sick and even more people should die of this fire. That's not what it is. It's just being aware of what's happening, right?

keeping, keep being aware. Some of these things we should push back on right away. But some of it is let's be aware of this. So when the pandemic is under control, we understand what we did, right? We understand we gave away. We saw this 9-11. There was a sense that we weren't with a Patriot Act and all these things. We weren't understanding what we were giving away at the time.

And then there was just reckoning later. Understand what's happening and understand how these things work. that at a future happy hypothetical date, we can have a full reckoning with that. All right, David, time to gingerly step to the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to at the press box pod. Somebody tweeted at us this week and said, Brian, why did you stop saying that all entries are gratefully received? I am still grateful. I just thought that whole windup sounded a little ornate, so I chopped it off anyway. David and I are eternally grateful.

Please keep sending them to us. David, have you seen the post campaign trail pictures of Pete Buttigieg? Yes, go on. He's got a full beard. His hair appears to be trimmed even shorter than it was on the trail. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. We're a week away from Pete Buttigieg getting swole and joining a gang.

Truly a different look. We thought the Al Gore beard was. weird, right, after the 2000 election? Well, the weirdest thing about the Al Gore beard was that, like, I think Al Gore might have gotten more votes with the beard. You look better with the beard. What is it? Are we, does America, I understand

there's this, all this stuff about like the taller candidate wins and blah, blah, blah, blah. But do you think our elector really is like, are we just a bunch of George Steinbrenners? Like, do we, is it like, if you have sideburns past your ear, then you're unelectable? I just feel like, I feel like in 2020, if you're already running an

outsider campaign, like, could you not, I mean, like, you're like, like, my accountant grew a beard. Like, everybody has a giant free, like, Grizzly Adams beard. Like, I think you can, I think you could do, I think he could have done that if you wanted to. He wouldn't have done any worse. When was, I know this is a trivia question, but when was

the last bearded president? Was it, Oh. It is, it's not U.S. Grand, is it? No, I mean, that can't be true. That's, of course, the one I thought of, too. I'm looking through the list here. Uh, Benjamin Harrison?

Yeah. So we've been, I think, presidential, annoying presidential scholars, please tweet us the right answer. But I'm thinking, I'm thinking it's, it's Benjamin Harrison. How is the mustache so much more, that's so much more acceptable look for a head of state than a beard? Is it, is it just like the mustaches throughout history? Like, it's a sort of iconic or like, you know, like it has an iconic.

resonance? That's a good question. That's a good question. I remember during they were during a different time in world history, there was a whole, you know, authoritarian's and mustaches bit that was going around. We will explore that later when we have our freedoms back. I'm just saying that if the host of meet the press can't have a beard, then I feel like a presidential candidate can have a beard. That's all. It's time. Authorities everywhere, David, well, almost everywhere, want us to stay at home for the next few weeks. and they're trying to make analogies to help people understand just how important that is. A researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center offered this analogy. When the Steelers are up 21 to 7 over the Bengals, it's not time to stop blitzing.

It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. If they had used any team other than the Bengals, this analogy would have been more on point. Thanks to Marcus Gilmer for that one. I guess this counts as an overboard Twitter joke. Do you see Thursday morning, just as we were recording this, he hosted the Daily Michael Barbaro. Oh, no. Tweeted out a screenshot of a Times graphic showing where and when parts of the country

stopped traveling more than two miles from their home and captioning it in a word, the South. He was rightfully roasted for ignoring that this is largely a result of slow to react political leadership. people also pointed out that the South is two words but it was an overword Twitter joke to tweet out other pictures and a maps with this caption in a word the South and then like a waffle house map a plate of barbecue

Spencer Hall states with real goddamn pyramid with a motherfucking bass pro shop inside of it a picture of Tennessee oh that was a rough day on Twitter And finally, David, the world somehow got through the month of March, truly grisly month in world history. And as a result, everybody did the inevitable March 1st versus March 31st side by side picks. My favorite was March 1st, Gwyneth Paltrow looking radiant. March 31st, the box at the end of the movie, 7. You picked a movie that is actually worth rewatching during the pandemic because it's really

life. Congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. Time for the notebook dump and David since the coronavirus canceled

nearly every sporting event in America, fans have been missing something in their lives. Well, starting April 19th on ESPN, they're going to get it back. Yes,

folks, the long sports drought is over. We'll finally get to see Michael Jordan pushing off on Byron Russell before hitting the game winner in the 1998 NBA finals.

I refer, of course, to the big sports media news this week. ESPN moved its Michael Jordan documentary up to April. Two episodes of the last dance, a 10-partner about Jordan's final season with the Chicago Bulls are going to begin airing every Sunday starting April 19th. Here's a bit of the trailer for the documentary. What time is it? My mentality was to go out and win at any cost. Jordan is the most talented player in the NBA by five. The show of the 90s, the

90s, the team of the 90s. How you do? Whenever they speak, Michael Jordan, they should speak, Scotty Pippen. I would just like to say for the record, I'm incredibly excited. No, the first thing I should say is full disclosure, the director of this. Not again. Yeah, we got to have a full disclosure sound drop sometime.

The director of this documentary, Jason Hare, also directed the Andre the Giant documentary, and so I worked with him a little bit on that. I have not talked to him in a number of months since there was no, since this was just a glimmer in his eye, or at least in the editing bay. I have been excited for this for a long time. Obviously, I was aware of its existence, I think probably before most people,

but I've been a little bit shocked by the excitement that's attended its announcement. I mean, I don't know. There's been a lot of things that have been pushed up, a lot of TV shows have been pushed up, a lot of movies have been put onto VOD. I feel like there's a little bit of an excitement that's gone with all of them

that's on the one hand performative. We all want something to be excited about on Twitter. But on the other hand, it's a sort of, it's kind of like what I was talking about Joe Buck of the last episode. It's like, it's okay to be happy about small wonderful things right now and to just really kind of indulge that happiness.

But on the media side, since this is, I guess, ostensibly a media podcast, yeah, the announcement is, or the reception has been a little bit overblown. Is it weird to say that? Yeah, I mean, when I saw like 9,000, retweets on Andrew Marchand's scoop tweet that this was being moved up to April. I was kind of like, are we really that desperate for this? I know we're all at home.

I know we all miss sports, but are we really, is it really that? That much of a thing coming down from heaven to, you know, keep us entertained and distracted during coronavirus? farmers? Well, I mean, I mean, just look at the excitement that we all, I mean, just look at the way we all immediately glommed on to the Tiger King, you know, on Netflix. I mean, Netflix is just brilliant. Either they, you know, they keep these things in their back pocket. It feels like just for the perfect weekend to drop them on sometimes.

But I think that, I mean, as soon as, as soon as I found myself, you know, with my family evacuated and quarantining and in front of the television, I honestly did have a thought, I guess when I was reading that ESPN replaying old WrestleMania as I'm like how do they not find a way to get this out So many things are getting rushed out now I frankly can't wait for the inevitable series of articles about how The coronavirus period was either the heyday for film editors You know across the country and around the world or we're gonna start reading articles about how they're just like Worked film editors to the bone and just like you know crack the whip on them until everything was done editing and then they fired them all

But regardless that is a subset of employees that apparently has, I mean, workers that it seems like just has a bunch to do right now or is that a bunch to do over the past two weeks. But yeah, I mean, this is, I thought about it immediately. I mean, this is something that I think that it would be crazy for them to not put out right now if it's possible and clearly it's possible.

And it'll be interesting to see if, you know, We don't often think of Michael Jordan because of his place as a basketball team owner, a minor team owner. I say that as a big Hornets fan. It's kind of hard to put him in, to put it, to get your mindset back and the Michael Jordan is the most famous man in America sort of place. But he certainly was that. I think there's a lot of people that probably don't even, like, know that he's a team owner at this point and only remember him from, you know, commercials and NBA championships. Yeah, or people that just don't remember even that part of it, you know, that well, right? I think he kind of exists for them.

I think like maybe like Wilk Chamberlain existed for you and I where it's sort of you heard about him a lot more than you actually saw him play. Yeah. And I just, it's these documentaries where you're basically doing semi recent history. And I have to say semi now because it was actually 22 years ago this, this season that they're focusing on. It's always an interesting dance for me, right?

because and Jason did so well with this in the Andre doc because there's an easy way and a kind of cheap way to do these documentaries, whereas you basically just do all your reading and interviewing and just essentially remind people of stuff that they either forgot or they're too young to have ever seen before. Here's all these crazy things that happened in 1998, right? That's a sort of baseline way to do it. And then with what he did with the Andre doc and obviously full disclosure, we're biased on this is actually. do all that, but also take somebody and allow us to see them in a different light, you know, and reinterpret somebody you kind of thought you knew. Yes. By bringing all this stuff back. And Jordan's an interesting one with that because we know a lot about Michael Jordan, right? There's just a lot of, you know, I mean, you and I have individually read probably multiple books about

Michael Jordan. Yeah. Or the people around him. Um, he was wildly, overcovered at the time. I say overcovered nicely, right? Like that was, he was the biggest story in the sports world when he was playing. And it felt at the time, probably nothing like the media standards of media today, but it felt like we knew everything.

But there is this stuff to kind of dig up. I love this one. This is from Michael McCann. He was writing in whatever's left of Sports Illustrated. He noted that this was a period before there were maximum salaries in the NBA under the Larry Bird exception. And he writes, Jordan's salary in 9798 was 33.1 million.

Yet each team, including the Bulls, had a salary cap of 26.9 million. So Jordan was literally paid more than the rosters of entire teams. We forgot about that. I forgot about that anyway. And now, right, like KD goes to the nets and you're like, oh, well, you know, he can only make this max or this max. Michael Jordan at the end there was like, well, what are we going to give them? you know, what's he worth? And he certainly was worth that much.

Yeah, you couldn't know. I clearly remember my dad talking about it at the time, but it was a little bit, I don't think there was any consideration of the salary cap or any comparative salaries. It was sort of like, well, I mean, you know, by any estimate, Michael Jordan has been underpaid for the past six years or whatever, and now they're kind of getting him back at the tail end of his career. Yeah, I mean, going back to what you said about the things that people know, I mean, there's different ways to do documentaries.

I mean, listen. indulging, I keep using that word, but indulging in the things that you do know for a few, for, it can be incredibly powerful, at least even to place you there. I mean, one of my favorite sequences in the entire like 30 for 30 family

is the, is the 30 seconds of super tech mobile in the Boe Jackson documentary, right? And you don't know Bo. That's a thing we all know, or at least those of us that grew up playing, you know, basic Nintendo know very well. But you're right. And Bill Simmons columns, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. But you're right. You have to spin, you know, you have to go deeper than that. And then with a five-part series, I think there's the expectation that you're going to go a lot deeper, right? I mean, 10-part series.

I mean, sorry, 10-part series, sorry, over five weeks. And I think that this is the difficulty, right? I mean, I haven't seen any of this. I don't know anything about it. But this is the really scary thing. I think Michael Jordan, separate from just about anyone else that's on his level,

especially in the realm of sports, there is a feeling that we don't know anything about him, you know? I mean, I remember going back to my parents, we were a big Michael Jordan. We were a big Michael Jordan household. I remember my parents only realizing that he was married to his first wife, like years and years into it.

And we were, like I said, Michael Jordan household. Like there was just no concept of his personal life, right? And there does seem to be, even the parts of him that we know about, you know, his predilection for gambling or whatever else, there's a sort of like veiled aspect that as it applies to anybody. So there's a lot people, there's going to be really high expectations for finding out the things that we don't know. There's also a lot of expectations that come with a 10-part documentary.

You know, I mean, like I said, I just drew the parallel of the Tiger King, but that was like a, that's gonna be in everybody's minds watching this, or a lot of people, and that was a roller coaster ride. Like, every time you turned around,

the series was about something different. I mean, the, the reveals were so big. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I mean, I think there is a level to which you can just sort of, I know, there's a lot of footage in this one that, you know, never before seen footage and obviously the interviews are all unique.

They can rest on just the existence of, I mean, the repetition of history for a long time. But it'll be very interesting to see the parts like you were saying that we don't know everything about. Yeah, and it's a challenge of structure, right? Because the obvious comp here beyond Tiger King is Ezra Edelman's OJ Doc. I was just thinking about that, yeah.

But that, like, in a way, just contained so many things that Michael Jordan, just as a character, just doesn't, right? Like it's not, it's, and Michael Jordan, to Michael Jordan's credit, he does not, he contains lots and lots of things, but OJ is just on a completely different planet. And, and I think that's the other thing when I see 10 part series. I'm fascinated to see how this lays out, because you and I jokingly called this the thornbirds of the coronavirus the other day. People will just be waiting. But at the same time, that's a real challenge, right? like Tony Koochooch is not going to die in the fourth episode of this.

Like if this were Game of Thrones or something like this. I hope, you know, anyway, maybe history will be rewritten. But so there's not like, we know Michael Jordan won the title that year. We know, we know a lot of the stuff. So structuring it in such a way that it will keep people coming back for 10 episodes. That's a lot. You know, that's, that's, that's a ton of pressure. I mean, just think of this, like, a month into this, you're having to bring the audience back for like episodes eight, nine, ten, you know? And I'm just

fascinated by that as a just a challenge, even if you have Michael Jordan, which is huge, you have Phil Jackson, you have Scotty Pip and you had Kobe in this documentary. All, I mean, you just got everybody, which is, which is awesome. Parsling all that out in order to just kind of keep people's attention is going to be a really, really interesting part of how this comes together. Yeah, I agree. I mean, there's also going to be the tension. Obviously, I know this firsthand from something, the Andre documentary and any wrestling documentary, there's always, there's the tension between the things that I know and the

things that the other 99.9% of any of the audience will know, you know. And I think a lot of the big, I think a lot of the biggest moments in this documentary are probably things that, like, you know, have appeared, have been alluded to in like Bill Simmons columns from five years ago or 10 years ago or whatever, you know, I mean, There's a lot of stuff that the diehard fans talk about that that might not be public record. But yeah, I mean, it's going to be wild to see. You know, the other thing, I'm sure we'll probably talk about it after it comes out. But, you know, Michael Jordan sat down for the interview like you just said.

And you and I both know from people who have tried to write about Michael Jordan. Certainly there have been a lot of people who have tried to do this documentary over the years. He's not particularly accessible. And I think the access here was, I mean, that was the green light, right? And it'll just be really intriguing to see, one, how open he is. And two, you know, frankly, how much his participation affects the rest of the documentary. I mean, that's always a consideration, right? I mean, I think we've talked about this in the show before.

In the modern era, you know, these athletes are stars who kind of co-sign their own documentaries, you know, you get into a little bit of a journalistic quandary, but, you know, we'll see how this, it'll be interesting to see how this goes. Yeah, I mean, like the one time he has really ever participated in his own nostalgia that I remember, I'm sure I'm forgetting something, was that Wright Thompson piece famously in ESPN magazine. And it was kind of like after that, you know, what has, what has he really done, you know, where he sort of put himself out there. So where he'll go.

I want to ask you this before we leave. this topic, kind of a right turn, but it's in the general, in the general vein of this. How much have you missed games so far, three plus weeks into this? I miss reading about games a great deal. I can't say frankly that I've been missing games

very much at all. Yeah, me neither. Not yet, anyway. I think part of that is the calendar, right? I think if it were football season, I would be like, I'm mad that the Cowboys and the Longhorns aren't playing. I was just going to say the exact same thing.

I mean, I wouldn't even say that I miss it that much. I would love an NFL Sunday right now. I mean, it would be nice to, like, sit with my kids and, you know, whatever and just pop a beer, you know, have a pop and whatever. But I took both sides of that. But it's a, but yeah, I mean, I don't, I got to be honest. I mean, maybe again, it's the kids. It's the family. I mean, most of the TV that I watch is, you know, a group effort at this point.

and frankly it's wonderful. But yeah, I haven't missed it a ton. Yeah, me neither. And maybe that makes us bad sportswriters and our entry badgers are going to not work when the ringer reopens in a couple of months, the ringer offices. But it's just funny.

And again, maybe it's just because it's March NBA is what we've been kind of missing, which is not the most, you know, heartbreaking thing in the world to miss. But I haven't yet. I haven't had that thing where it's like, damn, I wish they were a game on tonight. No, definitely. I definitely haven't. And I mean, you're right. Part of it's where we are in the season. And the NBA is, you know, by far my favorite sport. But, you know, so far I am happy to say other things have been, I've had other stuff on my mind. But I think, first of all, the Michael Jordan documentary is the perfect threading of the needle, at least from the sofa that I'm sitting on. Because I will get that part of my appetite, say, but my entire family will happily watch it with.

me. I think that, you know, we talked about this a couple weeks ago. The only thing, I mean, honestly, the only thing that I miss, I mean, is, and I, and it's a moral quandary for sure is the hot stove stuff. And, you know, I know, isn't that funny? I miss the transactions more than the games. I mean, we kind of, we knew that, right? But nothing brings it out like not having the games. and you're like, ah, I just kind of miss this, the trade rumors.

But NBA games in the abstract, I'm not dying for them. I think what, even though it's not the NBA off season, and I guess it's an interesting question as to whether or not they should just go to throw, you know, they would ever throw the doors open,

start the off season early just to, you know, have some entry. But, you know, winning and losing games at this point of the season has larger ramifications. So if I don't miss a specific game, I do kind of miss,

wondering what the hell is wrong with the rockets if they drop 10 in a row and what that means for their roster for next season you know I know there's a it's a sort of bigger question let's do a little listener mail David okay people are new here we do this every Thursday send us your questions

about the media politics coronavirus whatever you desire listener Ryan Signore is up first he writes to steal a question from binge mode what three media personalities would you most like to spend your quarantine with. My first question here is, are we spending it in my current house with like my kids?

Or are we in some kind of big brother but with media people style situation? Because Chris Cuomo's basement, which he's been broadcasting out of since he's been in quarantine has looked pretty cool. I've got to be honest. I don't want to catch coronavirus, but that has looked actually like a pretty badass place. Do you have anybody from the media? would like to spend your quarantine with? Damn.

I don't know. Is it just me? Do we determine that? Sure. Me and three other media personalities. I mean, gosh. My first instinct is to go with like just who seems the most laid back. People I think I could get along with the most because, you know, we're stuck at a place

together. But if you want to keep things interesting, I mean, it's really... I think that there would be no greater joy than being in like a reality style. Like it's like a three men and a baby situation house than with like Stephen A. Smith and Mike Francesa and like pull your third one of the whole number three out of a hat. Is there a baby too? Like do you all have to take care of an infant? No, I'm the baby.

I'm the baby. Like I would just love to see like Mike Francesa trying to make, you know, like a bowl of popcorn or something. and just them arguing over the whole thing. Maybe they would get somebody outside of sports for number three. Maybe you just get like a, you just get a Glenn Beck or something like, well, I don't know. But anyway, yeah, I think that could be a lot of fun.

I'm going to mix him in my three. The weird part is the thing. He would just be going outside all the time. I don't think he believes it. The qualities that make people good media personalities, especially on TV or radio, make them really bad humans, I think, a lot of the time. or just tough to get along with humans.

It's true, yeah. This is from J.M. Junkins. We've already seen Gen X claim quarantine victory over other gens because Latch Key Life prepared them to entertain themselves indefinitely. But what's the next COVID-19 generational battle slash self-congratulatory tweet and which Jen claims it? Oh, that is a really great question. I'm um can I push back at gen x claiming victory in this at least in our specific case we're kind

on the edge of gen x because gen x has kids so just just cool it with any any triumphalism about the best uh which generation is is having the best quarantine what do you think about this i will say this about the having kids thing yes there there is other stuff going on but that also does sort of i do feel sort of inherently prepared for the situation as we're driving out to Amish country in Pennsylvania. We were reading about the Amish on my iPhone, and there was some comment about, like, what do they do for fun?

What do they do after dinner? They don't watch TV, so what are they doing? And they were like, you know, sometimes they read books, sometimes they'll play a game. I don't even know if this is true. But I remember the part that was true, is, I mean, for a fact, they were just like,

but listen, they have really busy days. There's really not that much time after dinner. They get together with the family. They have dinner. They might do a thing or two. They might do some studies. But then, you know, their entire day is incredibly full, because they just have to do things over and over again all day long.

There's not a lot of time for Netflix, even if they had it. I sort of feel like I'm in that zone right now. You know, it's just like the constant turnover of doing things. It actually makes me, like, I am, I don't know if I'm equipped to be inside all the time, but like I'm certainly in a position where my days are filled not going out that much. Anyway, I don't know what the next generational battle is going to be. I mean, from just anecdotal evidence, there's, I feel like we're, you know, the generation, like there are, there's a generation of parents or grandparents who are just, you know, don't seem to care as much as their grandchildren do. I don't know if it's generational anxiety that we've all been the younger, the younger, the younger youngest amongst us have spent too much time freaking us out on Twitter conspiracy theories or Instagram conspiracy theories. But, um, I don't know. That's frighteningly. That's where my mind goes. And, um, or, um, immediately.

Listener, Joey Kennedy asks, how useful would Grantland be to ESPN during this non-sports time? Ooh. Now, I'm going to, I'm going to pull the plug a little bit on that because we're not going to congratulate ourselves in the back. But if we can go, you know, think peace, big idea here, it is interesting to me that during the Jimmy Pataro regime and even before, there's been this whole concentrated push, right, to say, this is a sports network. you're not coming here you're coming here because you want sports our fans tell us they want sports and we'll accommodate a little politics we'll accommodate some of other things but it has to be through the lens of sports right we're not really interested in diverting we want to focus on the

mission that might make sense during this limited time it sure would be nice if you had stuff that wasn't about sports you know things that could kind of branch out a little bit or were already branched out to more easily accommodate the situation we're in. I'm just saying, I don't know that that's the reason to change or what ESPN should have done. But in a way, they clipped off a lot of the parts of the empire

that would have been really useful in a time like this. Yeah, I think the answer is just to read that question as a rhetorical question. How useful would Grand, How useful would Granite be right now? Pretty useful. Listener Sam Hayes asked, can you talk about,

the classic April Fool's edition of newspapers and the collective avoidance in such grave pandemic times? What do you think the internal discussions were? Who was pushing for the traditionally mild prank? This is a great question because the April Fool's newspaper bit was terrible before the pandemic.

we did not need the pandemic to tell us that it was so dumb to do the fake story. And then, ha, ha, gotcha. Gotcha. I saw Bernie Goldberg. Remember Bernie Goldberg? The media is.

Remember, he was, I think he's still occasionally on Fox News. Maybe is that over? Did he leave with Bill O'Reilly? No, no. He's around.

He did that he had been appointed like Trump's minister of fake news. He did a Twitter bit. I think that was in April Fool. I'm not sure. But it was one of those things where I just like in the morning was glancing at that. And I was like, what? And then it was April Fool. Like this is the one person still doing the April Fool's bit.

I'm not going to let this get in the way. I'm just going to charge ahead. Stephen Holzupfell asks, what do you think the impact will be of sports stations rearing old games on future content? I've seen some people say it's a success that because it's a success now might mean it continues when live sports are back. But I feel it's only popular because it's the best. best thing available to sports fans today. Well, I don't think any of that is untrue, but old sports is good.

I mean, it's like a good game is fun to watch. The people that, people, if you know anyone that, like, our boss Bill Simmons, who talks about it all the time, if he watches sports so much that there's not enough sports to always fill his schedule and he'll find himself watching old Celtics, you know, playoff victories or whatever. If you're looking for something to, no, I'm just saying, if you're a sports fan looking for something to watch with some time to spare, like an old game is a wonderful thing to watch. But the idea that sports is, I mean, this isn't going to change the way that networks view sports. The point is that they're live events. They're sticky. They're like, you have to watch them

now if you want to, if you want to keep up with the conversation. That's the value. And that's why people end up tuning in. But, you know, maybe ESPN classics will have more of a presence after this. Who know? I feel at the beginning, right after the very, league suspended play. There was this Twitter sentiment that essentially said, this is going to be awesome because it's going to be like old ESPN, where it was this like hodgepodge of minor sports and crazy things and we're going to see old games and all this stuff. And the thing is, you don't want that ESPN to come back. You think you want that to come back, but you really don't want that ESPN to come back. Like that, that is so much better in your memory than it actually was in practice.

having like Australian rules football on instead of people talking about the NBA. Yeah. You might think you want that. I don't think you want that. Also, the whole sort of classic games thing, I think it's cool. I'm going to tune in today to watch Texas beat USC in the Rose Bowl again.

I'm absolutely on board with that. But like there's this thing called YouTube and you can basically watch any game you want all the time. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's a little weird to me that programming that stuff would be. be anything but a desperation strategy.

I think desperation strategy is a good way to put it. I think honestly what people are, I mean, again, speculation, but if I was Andrew Cuomo, this is the time when I announced it, this is my personal opinion and the slide next to me, repeat it. But I feel like more than anything, people are just sort of like reembracing the joy of being told what to watch. Because you're right, all this stuff is on YouTube. All this stuff is largely, I mean, largely it's available out there.

but I mean how many times did you actually go down YouTube and click on like the entire NBA finals you know game seven from no matter I mean from you know 1986 no matter how much you loved it you know or how you know how no matter how cool it would be to watch

you don't I mean what we're all kind of remembering now is what life was like before like you know what's the phrase the tyranny of choice or whatever like where we would you just sat down and turned on your TV and you were like oh this is what's on an 11 o'clock.

You know, it's like, oh, I remember the price is right. Let's go, you know? There's something really lovely about that, really calming about that. And I think these old sports just sort of fit right in that category. Grip the door handle, as I asked you this question from Ray, because it's the total

subject change. If Bernie Sanders didn't run during this election, do you think Biden still ends up being the nominee? Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah. I think that there's a lot of sliding doors shit. I mean, I think that you could, without Bernie,

you could talk yourself into Warren. I think without Bernie, you could talk yourself into it sort of being a more even playing field for the Cory Bookers and Kamala Harris's. You know, that they would have had a better shot. I think that the safe money is on the, for that answer is yes. I mean, it does seem like there was a little bit of inevitability,

especially with the way he was welcomed then and he wouldn't have been trailing a monolith like in the way that he was Bernie Sanders at least presumably but I think it could I think it could go either way yeah it might have changed the chess board as you said in all kinds of complicated ways

but a kind of Warren Biden Buttigieg I guess three way election face off would have been really fascinating to watch and if Warren you know If Warren's problem was she was unable to some extent to consolidate the left,

Bernie being out of the race would help that. It's just, yeah, that's a fast. It's almost worth the whole segment. That's truly a sliding doors thing. Maybe we should do that during the pandemic. That is what you do, right? Is do stuff like that. This one, David, is from Sports Guy 1212, who is presumably not our boss.

He writes, will we the forces of Twitter be able to shame the NFL into moving the draft back. Roger Goodell has come out and said that even league personnel are not advised to utter allow the idea that maybe the draft should not happen this month as scheduled. What do you think about that? I don't think there will be enough shame to do that.

I honestly think there'll be enough people, so many people will be looking forward to it that it'll balance that out. I do think, I do wonder about some practical aspects of the draft. Like, if like your pick is coming up and the scout that scouted, you know, somebody who's available at that position, like if his, like, internet goes out and he's no longer there on Zoom,

like, do you get a reprieve to go, to let him put in his two cents? Do they, like, pause the clock until, like, the internet starts working again? Yeah. I think there's, this is a very different situation than, you know, there's so many minor ways that this is, like,

just entirely different than what they're used to. But to answer the question, no, I don't think, I don't think they can, there's any amount of shame, in the world that could do that. But especially, unless, honestly, unless, you know, someone started shouting it on, on, you know, get up and first take every day. I don't think there's any amount of Twitter shame that could do the job.

I think it would take more than that because I think Jimmy Butero gets a call from Roger Goodell if that happens. I'm saying that's despite that, if he gets the call and still people, until ESPN's institutional stance is cancel it. That would be the only, that would be the beginning of a shift. I don't even know if that could do it on its own. It goes back to what we talked about in the first segment, how the government operates during a crisis in American life.

The NFL is not freaking stopping any of this. There is no way. Whenever I hear like, maybe we'll cancel the NFL season, I just don't believe it. Maybe health-wise will be there and it will be just impossible. And I understand like they will certainly follow the lead of everybody else. But man,

you talk about just indomitable parts of American life that are just going to do their thing and have been doing their thing since this whole thing. started. I would be shocked. All right, time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. Uh-huh. And here, David's size, there you go. Go ahead.

Monday's headline about a baseball player caught masturbating in the parking lot was carjacking. Yeah. Today's headline comes from Drew Johnson. It's from Norfolk, Virginia's Virginian pilot. They showed a picture of a once busy highway that runs in and out of Norfolk on Tuesday, after Governor Ralph Northam had put in place a stay-at-home order, David. Not surprisingly, the roads were empty, even as people would have been driving to work intent. What was the Virginian Pilots strained pun headline?

Rush hour or something? Are we, no rush hour, work, something with work? Think puns on rush hour. Um, rush, uh, rush, um, maybe keep the hour and play with. No, I know. I'm already there. I'm trying to brush, rush, uh, crush, uh, crush, shush hour. You're close.

It's hush hour. Oh, God, okay. Hush hour ran atop. That's pretty good. The Virginian pilot. Yeah. Yeah. Very solid pun.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Erica Servantus and Chris Almeida, production magic bar up. pal Jim Cunningham. We are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. Stay safe and see you then, David. Later, Brian.