The Press Box - Dan Le Batard vs. ESPN, Al Franken Reconsidered, and the Worst 'Lion King' Reviews | The Press Box

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Dan Le Batard challenges ESPN’s no-politics policy (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (24:00), Jane Mayer’s big New Yorker re-examination of the Al Franken affair (29:15), panning ��The Lion King’ (49:00), and more. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, after criticizing ESPN's no politics policy, Dan Labatard said he was not in the right frame of mind to be on his radio show Monday, according to Sports Business Journal. What I want to know is, if you didn't want to do this podcast today, how would you have described your mental state? What's the old Southern's phrase that was like sent for and couldn't come? Do you know that one? No, I don't.

Yeah, that's sort of just like I didn't want to show or I wasn't in the mood for showing up. Yeah, Brian was sent for and couldn't come today. I feel like we've seen a lot of celebrities who are maybe politicians who quit their job, cite exhaustion, right? Mental exhaustion. That's kind of a nice, kind of, I'm just going to simply exhausted. I think of it were you or I or I or even somebody who produces a show, the correct answer that you couldn't give would be I'm currently asleep. Yeah, just earlier today, Brian. Stelter tweeted a quote from Lebitard today saying that he was upon his return saying, quote,

I'm a little scared, a little nervous, I'm walking a bit of a tight rope. So, you know, the metaphors didn't end on day one. They're still going. I think that I would have been a little bit more sympathetic if he said he was, you know, as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs to go on the air today. We are the brain rot of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, and David Shoemaker here. A bunch of great stuff to get to on today's show. We're going to talk about that Big Al Franken's story in the New Yorker. We've got a report from America's content farms on the subject of Jeffrey Epstein. We've got the dateline of the week and the overworked Twitter joke

of the week, as always. But David, back to the Dan Lebitard affair. Last Thursday, Lebitard went off on Donald Trump's racist comments about the Congress members known as the squad and the center back bit in particular. He also went after ESPN. Let's listen to a little bit of it. There's a racial division in this country that's being instigated by the president. And we here at ESPN haven't had the stomach for that fight because Jamel did some things on Twitter and you saw what happened after that.

And then here all of a sudden, nobody talks politics on anything unless we can use one of these sports figures as a meat shield in the most cowardly possible way to discuss these subjects. But what happened last night at this rally is deeply offensive done by the president of our country. Lebitard then read a tweet from Nick Wright, who was apparently allowed to go in on this stuff. And then he continued, let's let this tape roll a little bit longer. It is so wrong what the president of our country is doing, trying to go down, getting reelected by dividing the masses at a time when the old white man, the old rich white man feels oppressed, being attacked. by minorities, black people, brown people, women. That's who we're going after now. Black people,

brown, people, women, and that's the, like, let's do it as the platform. That's what you're seeing. And the only way we can discuss it around here, because this isn't about politics. It's about race. What you're seeing happening around here is about race. And it's been turned into politics. And we only talk about it around here when Steve Kerr Popovich says something. We don't talk about what is happening unless there's some sort of weak, cowardly sports angle that we can run it through when sports has always been a place where this stuff changes. Five seconds after something like that happens, David, everybody's mind goes to ESPN and politics. ESPN and liberalism. What is the policy? Here's where my mind goes to. The anguish in

Dan Lebitard's voice because what he is explaining there is the eternal conundrum of being a sports writer. What you do on a daily basis is about these games. And what you're not talking about on a daily basis is about that shit that's going on over there in the White House and seems like a much bigger story. That's what he's talking about. And we're looking at it now through this ESPN lens and the rules and Jimmy Petra and all this stuff. We'll get to that in a second. This is what being a sports writer is all about. And it's saying that I have this giant platform and somehow either I'm not or I can't.

talk about the thing that it seems much more important. It seems like a much bigger story. And sometimes that plays out as policy between the writer, the media member and their employer. But I think most of the time it just plays out in somebody's heart and in their mind. And to me, if I ever meet a sports writer, sports media person who isn't feeling this, especially right now, I kind of wonder what's wrong. with them. And I kind of wonder, you know, if you, if, if you just think that this little thing we do

over here most of the time is just fine. And, you know, there's not a little part of you that wonders if you shouldn't be doing something else with your life. Then I just, you know, so to me, it was, to me, it was LeBatar articulately articulating something that has been around forever. What did you think? I think that's right. I think, I think that you put it perfectly. You know, we're not in the finger-pointing part, a segment of the discussion yet, but I do think that there's something to be said for, you know, when you, when your business model is creating this kind of wall-to-wall entertainment world, right? Then there has to be room for discussion of other things. I mean, if your intention is to get people to turn on the channel in the morning or turn on the radio in the morning and never flip the dial,

I mean, that's got to be the, you know, the goal at the end of the day. And then in some ways, you've got to figure out, you've got to figure out a way to be on encompassing, or at least somewhat more encompassing in your subject matter. And then separate from that, or maybe it's a corollary to that, when your business model is based on personalities, right? ESPN Radio is not just reading sports scores and, like, injury reports.

is this is Dan Lebitard, the human being, is the reason, I mean, is, is getting paid lots of money by ESPN because of who he is as a person. He has a TV show. He has a radio show that's broadcast as a TV show. This is, I mean, it's, it's, it's him as a personality. And part of that personality is, is interested in talking about this. Well, it shouldn't be, I mean, on the one hand, I get, I get the, the corporate stance of like, only when it relates to sports, only when, whatever.

But it does seem sort of ridiculous on its face when the hook is that someone with a similar job description at another company tweeted about it. And now we can talk about it. Now, maybe that doesn't count for, you know, maybe that maybe it doesn't count when Nick Wright tweets about it. But is really all we need just to have like, I mean, couldn't we just have one low level NFL player or one medium tier NFL or NBA player who just took it upon himself to. to tweet a liberal, the liberal perspective on every political thing so that they would have a hook to talk about it on the radio? I mean, would that really be a solution? Because that seems to be what they're asking for. And that's what he's calling out. That's what he's calling out is so silly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and to think that, I mean, I guess that like, you know, we discussed this,

we discussed this, you know, when Trump first made the, I mean, first, first tweeted these things, you know, but that I feel like at some point you have to just acknowledge. that something's beyond the pale, right? And I think that's what Levitard was doing here. And I think that it's a direct challenge to his superiors to say, you know, I'm sure that along with all of these bylaws or whatever about, you know, sticking to sports, they probably said, you know, at some point it'll be to the point that you'd have to touch on it. And I think this is Levitard saying we're at that point.

And if you don't agree with me, then like, sure, then you're welcome to come down on the side of the races. This is, well, I think John Skipper had a policy who was a previous president of ESPN that was like that, which is there's all these things we have to do because we're ESPN and the data shows us we should do this and this is where the audience is and this is what the audience wants. But there is a subset of things we should do because they're the right thing to do. Because the time, the country, whatever it is, demands that we should do this. This is the right thing to do. People may not want this as much as they want something else, but this is the right thing to do.

In every public statement Jimmy Patero has made, he has not talked in those terms. He has said very clearly, the data tells us to do this. The data says ESPN viewers, consumers do not want politics. Politics with big, big air quotes. So therefore, even if you, Dan Lebitard, were hired, as you just said, because you're a really interesting person, because you're a polymath.

And when you sit down at dinner at night, 60% of your conversation is about this thing Trump said today. And you have a great interesting perspective on it. You're not allowed to talk about that. That's it. We don't want that. We want you talking about NBA free agency, NFL training camp, that kind of stuff. And, you know, listen, Lebitard has snuck more non-sports into a sport. show than basically anybody in human history, especially on that big a platform.

But, you know, I don't know. It's funny because to me, Patero's whole thing was you can't talk about this. And by the way, that forced everybody at ESPN whose politics are similar to lebitards to make a choice. And we know who these people are. This isn't a secret. But those people have made a choice to say, look, you get the ESPN exposure. You get the nice contract. you get a perch at the top of the sports media world, but guess what? You have to play by the rules. You can't talk about it.

And, you know, Patero, since he came in, did that, and think of how many people have made that choice. Think of how many people, 99% of the time on a daily basis have been like, okay. Okay. Well, 99% of the time, it's, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people would make that choice.

I don't, I think that there's a, you know, I don't think we need to wade too deeply into the moral imperative argument. I think that for a lot of people, a lot of people's calculus is, or people are in a lot different position than Dan Lebitard. Maybe Dan Lebitard would have done the same thing if he was broadcasting on a pirate radio to an audience of 100 people, you know. I kind of actually do want to wait into the moral imperative. I just mean that a lot of people's calculus for saying yes is that they decide, is that, you know, they have other, their priorities are providing for their family or doing whatever,

you know, there's... I don't even want to cast disperses anybody else at ESPN. let's roll this back and imagine that Grantland had continued past 2015. Simmons resigns. We're all a sort of happy Grantland family. And Donald Trump gets elected. And Jimmy Patero becomes president of ESPN. And you and I look at each other and go, wait, we can't say anything about Donald Trump ever, either in our ESPN product or basically on our Twitter feeds or just we can't use any part of.

Whatever microphone we have, would we have quit the next day? You know, in my Walter Middy fantasy, I'd love to think so, but I probably not. Yeah. Probably not. But I would like to think that you and I would have at least been pushed mentally inside ourselves to worry about it and to wonder if we would get the right decision. Yes. but I think that I'm not sure if this I'm not sure what side this really comes down on but I think it's worth it's worth pointing out that part of that there is a moral aspect of that which is that like the things that our president said and tweeted um you know everyone should be shouting from the rooftops about how offensive and inappropriate and problematic they are but there's also the I mean and this maybe this gets back to what we you know the kind of core of the the media side of the conversations like

The idea that a site like Grantland would exist and not be touching on these issues is just might would be impossible to to consider in 2019, right? I mean, that would be like, I mean, could you imagine what what the third rail would have to be for Simmons or Sean Finacy to tell us, no, we're not going to touch on that for fear of offending readers? I mean, it would just like the idea that you can be a voice driven, a writing driven, even just an idea-driven media outlet in 2019 and have that and have anything, have something that significant be off limits

is just, would be mind-boggling, right? So like that, so to say if he, I mean, if that was the rule at Grantland, yeah, it would be like, I would think about quitting,

but I would think about quitting almost less so because of the moral aspect and more because of the like, I don't, this, what have we gotten ourselves into just from a purely functional standpoint aspect? Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely.

And, and when moral, You know, again, it's, you're right. It's biting off a lot to say, I expect everyone to be up in arms about this and, you know, and calling out Trump for racism and stuff like that. I guess I'm more mean like just living with yourself and being okay with what you did, you know? Look, we're lucky to work in a place in a great place right now where we don't have those kind of handcuffs on us. But still, you know, you and I spend a lot of our time doing other stuff too. I love writing about Kendrick Perkins I do that's that's fun

but when I look back and say you know Brian what'd you do during the Trump years I mean you know that that stuff plays into it not because there's anything wrong with writing a piece like that because just what I talked about with the conundrum of being a sports writer to your point about voice

I think that's so important because the kind of people we're talking about here were either hired or promoted by John Skipper and they were hired or promoted because they had a voice and because they were interesting people beyond the world of sports. Those are the people who are now being are subject to a policy that is really enforceable only to people who are, all I want to do is break NFL trades. All I want to do is break NBA trades. I just maybe I care about politics, but it's not, you know, my day job is this and this is what I want my, work product to be.

And it to me, it's like you have a rule that was designed for a totally different workforce than the workforce that you actually have. And when, you know, Simmons, by the way, and I recommend Simmons did a whole prelude to this on his Monday podcast, which everybody should listen to. Because he's been in the eye of that storm in Bristol, you know, at a level that you and I can't even imagine. But one thing he talks about is what's going to happen with Levitart. And I wondered the same thing because, dude, this is July 2019.

We got 16 months before this election. Is Trump going to campaign? Is Trump going to talk about taxes and tax rates for the next 16 months? And if you let loose on this one and said, how can we not be talking about this? What happens when the next one happens? You know, and one thing we read in all the reports is that, you know, Pataro and Lebitard talked this last weekend, and Pataro said over and over

that he's not going to change the policy, that he believes this is the only clean way to have a policy is saying, you can't talk about this stuff. Well, listen, I mean, maybe that's, I mean, maybe that's a functional path through it, right? I mean, it's the sort of like, I mean, I forgot what they called it,

but just sort of like the 24 rule when we had the national debate about torture. It's just like, no, I mean, you know, I think most level-headed people could agree that the appropriate thing to do was to make, was for torture in all instances. to be illegal. And if there was ever an instance where torturing someone was the only way to

stop a terrorist attack, well, then presumably you would be, you would, you know, you would, you would not be convicted of a, of a major crime that you would be released because of mitigating circumstances. And this, and this, that's wildly overblowing it maybe, but this feels like that, right? That, like, there's an exception to every rule. And maybe the most powerful thing that, that Dan Levitard can do is to not be overtly political every episode for the next six months and to let, and to only, you know, and to choose to make his stands based on the things that he's, he determines to be beyond the pale. Now, maybe we'll be in a situation where there's many, many instances of being beyond the pale. We could be beyond the pale twice a week.

But I think, yeah, I mean, listen, no, I mean, this is, our podcast keeps on going along, I guess. But the, but the, but I do think that there's a, I do think that there's a power to him. There's a power. I mean, it's not like Dan Lovatard is an eight- political person. No one was particularly shocked by this, but when it happened, I think that a lot of people were caught off guard. And I think that that is where a lot of the power of what he, of his statement came from, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. One hundred percent. Can confirm. And so, and so maybe. After talking to people at ESPN, they were absolutely taken aback and blindsided. And so maybe that's, I mean, so maybe the, the answer is, Pataro's rule, I mean, I think that

there's some legitimacy to if to the to the idea if you're going to take it that this is that this is a this is what ESPN is going to pursue in the abstract that there's legitimacy of the idea that you have to have a hard and fast rule or else policing it would be impossible um and then may and so maybe the the the own the functional way forward is to have that be the rule and to punish the dan lebitards of the world when they feel it's necessary to speak out but to punish them in consideration that they're i mean you know consider when doling out the punishment that they're doing a supremely important thing that they believe very strongly in, you know?

What is it like? It's like the equivalent of finding an NFL player like $25,000 for missing a mating or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I guess at the end of the day, I just, the part of the ESPN is ESPN enforcing its discipline policy part is the part I just don't give a shit about it all. It just seems so small in all this.

But that's why we're talking about it, though, right? I mean, that's not, it's not actually not. It's actually not why I'm talking about it. But, you know, I just, I just think, I think that is, yes, you're right. That is, that is the cheese and the mouse trap that everybody runs to because it's ESPN and politics. It's media reporters. It's Clay Travis and all that stuff. To me, I just like, I just think there's something.

I think there's just a much bigger idea here about the profession that we work. I remember talking to Bob Lipsight many years ago about this. Bob Lipsite, who snuck more politics into a sports column than any. human being has ever done. And wrote it better than any human being has ever done probably. Yeah. He said to me, he said, you know what?

I covered sports through the lens of race and gender and class. I did. But you know what else I could have done? I could have gone out and written about race and gender and class. I could have just done that. And like I said, that to me is the idea in the back of everybody's mind here. And that's that I certainly the idea in the back of everybody's mind here. idea in the back of Dan Lebitard's bite or not the front of Dan Lebitard's mind, but that's the big,

that's a big thing. It's the whole enterprise. It's not about ESPN and making rules and all that stuff. They, they're going to go on just fine. Whatever happens to Dan Lebitart, they're going to be just fine. Yeah. It's gone, it is, it's the business we work in. And it's a lot of us, not all of us, a lot of us, kind of coming to grips with that on a daily basis, especially in times like these. well one one quick thing on the lipsit in the lipsite quote that you just reference you know half remember quote by the way right no no no but that's but it's an important idea regardless because you i mean just i'll just put you a little bit on the spot but you have a lot of runway at the ringer you could write more or less what you want to write as long

as i mean subject matter wise there's very few things that are just getting shot down you know at first pitch um if you were determined to write us i mean a story about about race or racism about class there's a good chance you would do it through the guys of sports right you would find you would find a sport story

to tell that would make the broader point that you want to make because that's what people are going to read right I mean that's what or that's there's a there's a you as a writer might find some comfort there but also it's a it's a you know the best way to illustrate a story sometimes is by writing through the lens

of something else by writing under the the banner of sports or some other broad topic that people are accustomed to reading about. The whole point I'm trying to say is one of the scary things about this instance and about where ESPN is in general is that it risks shutting down not just a voice that we like on the radio,

but an entire important wing of journalism and literature. For fear that someone might be offended, we're not going to, we're going to just say an upfront no on all of those things that Bob Lipsight wrote, you know,

that none of those things would have gotten through, would get through today, the thought of that, I mean, that's, that's frightening. You're saying essentially that sports writers

who had this part of their brain would see how high the gates were to getting that stuff into print or onto the air, so they would just go elsewhere. They'd just say, yeah. Yeah,

it's certainly a fear. I mean, I certainly at big places. I guess what I would say is that nowadays, at here we are at the end of the newspaper era, the wall is shorter than it's ever been at other places. So there's a ringer, there's deadspin, we could name a hundred places that just really don't care.

And it just doesn't matter. And they're not too worried about it. Yeah. But if you're already working there, if you're an employee at ESPN, if you're an employee at one of these big places, the idea of like, will I risk my job to tell this story when I could just as easily

tell another story. I mean, that's, I think that, that's the, that's the fear that I'm talking. Absolutely. And I think, and again, I think that's the daily choice. And, and, and in sports writing and talking about sports is fun. People, people, people do it because it's fun. And choosing to write stories and that is, is not, you know, is not just pure toy department. People do it because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really enjoyable. But you know, maybe that, that, that, I have this great idea, but maybe I'll do this other idea because it works better for my, for my employer. And I, and again, I, I just think there's a hundred percent chance that that's happening every day.

Yep. A hundred percent chance that's happening every day at ESPN and elsewhere, by the way. All right, David, time for 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 nominees to at the press box pod where they will be gratefully received. David, the most horrifying thing this summer that did not. happened on Capitol Hill was the trailer for the movie adaptation of cats. I'm really not kidding. Speaking of moral imperatives.

Oh my gosh. I'm kidding. I think. Anyway, take it away dancing cats. My very first trip to New York when I was in like seventh or eighth grade, my mom and I went to the winter garden to see cats. And it was one of the most magical nights of my life. It almost made me want to be a theater critic. I didn't even understand what that job was. And I just thought like, whatever, whatever life is, I wanted to be here in the balcony of the Winter Garden, watching cats climb up and down the walls and sing memory at the end of the show. Then I watched that trailer and I'm like, what the fuck was that whole thing about? Yeah. I have no memory of the plot of this at all.

And I can't imagine what it is. That was so weird. I know what the plot is. It doesn't get me any closer to understanding what the point of it is. I think that the overwhelming... This is going to be one week where I think the overworked Twitter jokes are sort of all justified. The overwhelming feeling that I got in this office around the ringer was that especially for like the under 30 set who were aware of this movie the whole way along. I mean, through production, we're just sort of like, wait, this movie is actually about cats.

you know, I think that like you can hear about the movie a million times other sets or different sizes or whatever and then it's just like, no, that's Taylor Swift in a cat costume. That's just sort of unbelievable.

Yeah, I had no idea that that's what was coming. I didn't know what cats was, what the plot of it was, and it was very... I think we should just have a sidebar of just explaining the plots of Andrew Lloyd-Weber musicals just directly. Because I thought they would...

This may be number one in just bad shit crazy, but number two would be a close number two. I just think we could make some hay here. Maybe we'll start that on the ringer on the press box next week. All right, David, speaking of cats, it was an overword Twitter joke just to write, I'm allergic to cats.

You sent me that. Yes. I'm allergic to cats. I did see a couple people do the side by sides of Rebel Wilson's cat, laying down with her arm behind her head and Garfield with the same pose. That was like a big, big Jim Davis moment. Also, Iolanthi Rosa asked us to please consider the phrase uncaddy valley for inclusion.

And boy, that was an overweight Twitter joke. And a good one, the uncaddy valley. I love it. Thanks to Ionanthi for that one. Finally, David, in basketball news, lots of players, or excuse me, let's take that over again. In basketball news, lots of NBA players ejecting themselves from the Fiba World Cup team this week.

James Hardin, Tobias Harris, Zion Williamson, all not going to play. It was an overworded Twitter joke to announce that you, too, Twitter user, were leaving the Feebordal Cup team. And I include this not because it's particularly funny, but this is just, this is one of the great overwork formats of all time.

Somebody, some celebrity announces something and you two decline, like I am not appearing at Davos. Or I will not be at the Royal. Remember, didn't we have the Royal Wedding version of this? I will not be attending the Royal Rumble, but yes, that is true. I will not be attending the Royal Rumble.

that'd be the wrestling version. Anyway, thanks to Dave Mulhern for that one. All right, David, before we move on, let's take a quick break. Today's episode is brought to you by Luminary, a new podcast subscription service with some of the best content around. I'm excited about Luminary because it's the only place you can listen to the newest show on the ringer network, Break Stuff, the story of Woodstock 1999. This is definitely a podcast you can't miss.

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Luminary. dot link slash press box cancel any time. Terms apply. All right, David, tie for the notebook, Dom. Call this first item Frankencence. or Frankinsanity. On Monday, Twitter collectively paused to read Jane Mayer's big New Yorker reexamination of the Al Franken affair. If you've forgotten the then U.S. Senator Franken was accused of a number of Me Too offenses, most notably pretending to grope the breasts of a talk show host named Leanne Tweeden while she slept while they were on their way back home from a U.S. O tour.

And what mayor did, in addition to interviewing Franken, who not surprisingly, regrets resigning and thinks he got railroaded is to do a point by point recap of what happened. How the first allegations surfaced from Tweeden and then the subsequent allegations and then how Kirsten Gillibrand and a number of senators called on Franken

to resign. I saw some mild tweaking of this piece on Twitter. I thought first of all, this was just a very valuable TikTok of that whole affair because I don't know about you, David, but I had forgotten a lot of this and I had forgotten, for instance,

the sheer number of charges against Al Franken and the sheer number of accusations, I kind of felt like, oh, it's this one thing, but it had a photograph and all that stuff. What did you feel about the piece? Yeah, I felt the same way. I think that it was that the... I wasn't more shocked because there were more accusations,

I should say. But, yeah, I didn't remember the whole story. I think you're right, that it was a helpful way to break it all down. And the media side of it, I thought, was what was most, I mean, not most interesting, but very interesting, especially again for the purposes of this podcast, but just the way that there were the constant refrain in the piece was that this, that someone tried to do or wanted to do this, but it was, but they didn't do it because of the way it would come across in the media. Or they tried to do this, but it, but it fell in the deaf ears of the media. and just the way that, one, the kind of media, the institution of journalism is so predictable. And so in some ways, averse to getting to the truth.

That, that I think was what really, I mean, what really stood out to me. Some of that came from the Frankenstein because they realized pretty early that there were inconsistencies in Tweed and story. Or there were a couple of elements of Tweed and story that weren't true. She thought, for instance,

that Al Franken, she and Al Franken were performing on this USO tour for troops overseas. And they had a sketch and there was a kissing scene in the sketch where he and she were going to kiss. And she said that she thought he had written that for her

as a kind of way of trapping her. And then there's all this video out in the world and also testimony from other women who Franken went on the tour that he had performed this sketch many times. It was supposedly like a body. Body was the word, repeatedly used in this piece, a body sketch.

They're done. There were things like that. But Franken, as you said, early-ish in the Me Too era, thought he couldn't say anything about that. Because he thought, if I come out with this, it'll sound like I'm being defensive and it'll, it'll just make things worse. And he was calling for a essentially a Senate investigation into himself. Yeah. Meanwhile, all these other women come forward.

and eventually the eventually Gillibrand and a number of female senators call him to resign and then he feels like

he can't do anything about that. I was, it's funny because I saw Nate Silver tweeted he called the piece manipulative as hell and a master class

and biased reporting and editing essentially accusing the New Yorker and mayor of stacking the deck to try to get readers to be sympathetic

for Franken. That I think was probably some of the intention of the piece. I actually came out with the totally opposite feeling, though, which is that while there were some things that happened very quickly, and, you know, he certainly felt pressure and eventually caved depression, resigned from the Senate, I wasn't so sure that he got railroaded at all.

And one reason of that is that this photograph existed way before Al Franken ran for Senate in 2008. Al Franken, reminder, won his Senate race by 312 votes out of more than 2.5 million votes cast. Yeah. Now, if, if, if Leanne Tweedin had put forth that picture in 2008, is Al Franken even in the Senate? No. No way. I mean, he, he had a lot of stuff to deal with during that campaign about, oh, you know, I, you know, drug use on SNL and, you know, some, some humor piece he wrote and some sketchy run, all that kind of

stuff. I don't know that. I don't know that he's even in the Senate at all. So it seems a little weird to say, oh, well, you know, just because this came out in the context of Harvey Weinstein, me too, Roy Moore, which was a campaign that's going on. Mayor writes a lot about that, that he would have, that this was the only reason anyway. I just almost, I almost thought, oh, wait, I forgot that this This happened a long time ago, and he might not have been in the Senate to begin with. Inso much as it was a political hit on Franken, whether or not there was railroading involved. The New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer went out of its way to kind of explain this, but the story originated with an L.A. conservative radio station, but they published it on their website in mayor's retelling to give

it's sort of the sheen of legitimacy, but they didn't, you know, they didn't ask Franken's camp for any comment or anything before they, before they publish for fear that someone would beat them to the story or the story would come out. You know, I think our view, our perspective, I think it was, that's worth pointing out. And I don't know how much the repetition of it being printed first, it really matters. But I do think that our perception is skewed by the fact that this was a successful hit. And even if you don't want to consider it a hit, it's skewed by the fact that he that you know he ended up resigning from this from from from his job right um and if this had been a total boondal if this has been like a jacob wolse thing then i think we would

look at it all completely differently you know if he if he had kept his job and and everything had blown over i mean i guess what i'm saying is i think we judge the story based on the results and and based on what actually happened and and whether or not mayor's piece is a is a just corrective or, you know, manipulative trash, whatever, as, as Nate Silver called it, I mean, not in those words, but manipulative. You know, I think, I think that the piece is worthwhile on its own terms. I just add two things to that, which is not only did Frank and resign, but Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh didn't. Right. And for, after being accused of much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more serious things.

And so there's all this discontent to anger on the left that those guys got away with it. And somehow Al Franken, again, for stuff that was just not even in the ballpark, didn't get away. Yeah. And that to me, in that to me is, I mean, in a way, it's why the mayor piece is so valuable. Because that was my thought about it. And then you read this and you realize there's a lot more. There's just a lot, this is a lot more complicated than that. And, you know, I don't know, you know, Joe Biden, we saw push through a bunch of accusations of unwanted touching and sort of weird behavior.

Franken had a bunch of accusations like that. Even his, and some of his staffers say that he did the, you know, kind of Hollywood show business thing of just kissing all women on the lips, even women he didn't know well. something that would be interpreted and very rightfully interpreted as a weird thing to do. I thought the other theme that came out of this from Franken's end

is just as political tactics. There's obviously part of him that wishes he just had hung in there and not resigned and pulled a Bob Menendez and said, hey, this looks terrible, but I'm not going anywhere. And you can either stand with me. Right. You can either stand with me

or not and we'll do a huge investigation. And look, if Tweed and accepts his apology as she did and says she didn't want him to resign, if then you'd have, you know, some of these, if some of the accusations of he had been able to get some information out there and stuff like that, would he have had to resign like six months later? I don't know. Does he get reelected? Maybe. And I, but again, that's all coming from him. And I just, I thought that was an undertone here of like, maybe Franken thinks he did the wrong thing. Yeah. And, and, and, and, And if he had to run this back, he would have just hung in there. Yeah, I mean, this is a really, really, really small part of the story.

But for the, you know, Kirsten Gillibrand and, I mean, I guess Kamala Harris was mentioned, was part of that original group that went to Schumer as well. But if you're so politically insecure that you can't wait to actually have evidence bear out, I'm not sure how that really reflects on your demeanor to be president. I think that's a question that's worth asking, right? it's certainly been asked and you know

do we have any doubt that the frankin thing just just you know cut the tires on the Gillibrand for president campaign before it even started I mean it's said pretty explicitly in the piece yeah yeah I mean that's like to me

when I hear when I hear criticism of Gillibrand it's like I would say it's like 70% Franken related yeah online anyway but a really interesting piece recommended Jane Mayer and the New Yorker. David 2020 dropout watch.

Eric Swalwell is already gone. We've already, we've, we already miss Eric Swalwell. Could Maryland's John Delaney be next? I want to refer you to a piece in Axios by Alexi McCammon titled John Delaney's staffers have asked him to drop out. Things, things are going well when either the people who work for you are begging you to stop running for president.

McCammon reports that the staff thought he flopped. with the first debate in Miami, notes that Delaney has not been competitive despite spending nearly $19 million and loaning himself $11 million of his own money. Delaney's wife, April, she reports, is basically running the campaign according to one former staffer.

And Delaney, there's a feeling Delaney is easily influenced by outside forces like his wife and friends rather than his own staff. Also reminder, David, John Delaney has been running for president for nearly a year now. Yeah.

He declared last summer and kind of ran that I'm the only guy running for president bit for a long time and anyway it seems it seems like things aren't he's going to be in this next debate so maybe that's it kind of pulls

pulls a swall well and as soon as as soon as you run out of debates you're out yeah maybe that's a strategy here as long as I can get free time on cable I'm running for president and as soon as the free cable time dries up dries up I'm gone Delaney denied the report

and yesterday he could be seen tweeting quote I talked about my favorite app my go-to karaoke song and my inspiration for fighting climate change on now this news so we were not deprived of knowing John Delaney's go-to karaoke song I did not have the heart to watch it

date line of the week David was El Paso Texas home state Texas Great City El Paso an NBC reporter went there to take stock of the floundering, and that is the official journalistic adjective here, floundering, campaigned at Beto O'Rourke, and I'm going to read the lead of this article,

and you just stop me if you hear something that maybe sounds a little bit off, okay? And it may be about El Paso, Texas. All right, you ready? Quote, Beto O'Rourke has gone from phenom to frontrunner to flailing in five months. And so he came home to this dusty border town last week to group. Now,

wait, what? Dusty Border Town. Better work is not from where Snoopy's brother lived in the penis. Dusty Border Town. That's fantastic. El Paso has 600,000 plus people. Dusty Border Town. What,

what Pulp Fiction did that? The person, by the way, went there. This is, this is a date line in El Paso. This isn't, yeah, They didn't just like Google, like, retro postcards from El Paso history. Was she watching Touch of Evil on the plane when she got off or something? Dusty Bordertown, anyway, I thought that was funny. What is dusty even mean in a city?

Is it just the old Western, like dirt streets and stuff? I don't even know. Yeah, with the saloon and the Sasparilla being sold in a car or something like that. I tweeted this and somebody somebody tweeted back, well, El Paso is kind of dusty. So maybe this anyway. David, I'd like to nominate a doorstepping journalist of the week. He is Javon Vattal of the TV station New York One. And at the U.S. Capitol, he was following Rand Paul of Kentucky around.

Rand Paul being one of the two senators to block unanimous passage of a bill that would fund the 9-11 victim victims compensation fund. I want you to listen closely. Here is some of the audio of Vatal and Paul's encounter in the hallways of Congress. This is so good. Sarah, and probably, is there anything you can say to the first responders who came yesterday? It would be interesting to see what... If you watch Fox News, we just did an interview on Fox News, and there's a lot of good information on there.

If you'll tell your viewers to tune in to Fox News, we have some great stuff on there. With all due respect, sir, I'm not Fox News, but can you paraphrase really quickly? Well, if you're a professional outlet, you could call and get an interview like they did. Sir, we tried multiple times. Yeah, I don't know who you are. Who you went? I'm with New York One. Sir, what is your objection to the bill?

If you would like to be sort of a professional reporter. With all your respects, sir, what is your objection to the 9-11 first responder bill? If you'll call and get an interview, it would be a great idea. I understand you have issues with the national debt. If you watch Fox News. Is that your objection, sir? You watch Fox News. You'll see that we explained exactly what the lies were.

So watch Fox News. Do you mind clearing that up, sir? What do you mean by the lies? Is there anything else you can tell us, sir? All right. Thank you, Senator. Wow. Do you think Rand Paul genuinely wants

Javan Vatal to be a professional reporter? Anything he wants to help him? Kind of be like, just give me some career advice here, yeah. Yeah. If you just watch Fox News and transcribe my remarks off a friendly outlet, we could finally get the message.

Do you think that maybe this doesn't matter? Do you think that if you watch Fox News, I already did an interview there, is a more compelling case? than no comment. I mean, do you think that he, do you think he came off looking better than if he had just been like,

yeah, no big deal, but no comment right now? Wouldn't that have been the way to go if you're determined not to talk to anybody? Absolutely. I mean, it sort of cuts the interview short, right? Are they going to run? Is New York, one, going to run a minute

of following mute Rand Paul down the hallway? Probably not. No. I was, when I was watching it, I couldn't help but think local news is like the dorkiest old media thing. There are only so many things that transfer from that world into Twitter world, but guy following politician down the hallway and politician lecturing the guy is one of

those things that translates perfectly. Yeah. It's amazing. It's got it worked. It works on Twitter just like it worked on the channel six I team back home. Yeah. Well, this is also it's also this is the case, this is the case, you know, for just sort of laying bare the filibuster, you know, and we've talked before about how, you know, one of Trump's master's strokes was figuring out that he could just bullshit for, you know, 30 seconds and the question would change to something you wanted to talk about. All you have to do is kind of run out the clock. Man, I'm sure that Rand Paul probably thought that he was running out the clock, you know, I bet he thought that this was going to be a five second clip anywhere that if it, if it amounted to any TV time at all. But, I mean, he just

looked like someone who didn't have the facility to discuss a vote he had just made. And it's, that was like, I mean, this is their, this is all the can, in the next cycle, these are the, the, the, the, the campaign commercials against him for, I mean, for his opponent, this is, it's just going to be this. Just walking down the hall, not having an answer to a very simple question. David, I have a content farm report for you. Rural radio station might have a farm report. We've got a content farm report here. A really interesting piece by Tiffany Sue in the New York Times about Jeffrey Epstein, who has been accused, been indicted on sex trafficking. charges. The piece is called Jeffrey Epstein pitched a new narrative and these sites published it. So after Jeffrey Epstein got out of jail for the first time back in 2009, he tried to rehabilitate his image by having someone pitched journalist about all the good stuff he'd

done, all his all his good works. He got pieces in National Review, Huffpo and Forbes.com quoting Tiffany Sue's piece here. The article on the Forbes website was attributed to Drew Hendricks, a contributing writer, as the Times revealed an article last week he was not the author of the piece instead it was delivered to him by a public relations firm and he was paid $600 to attach his byline and posted at Forbes.com

she continues about Forbes.com a staff of roughly 200 employees produces Forbes's in-house journalism but most of the hundred articles the site publishes each day comes from a group of nearly 3,000 outside writers Yeah. 3,000.

Yeah. I mean, Forbes is, I know this, again, only because I, traffic in professional wrestling journalism, which is just a wonderful part of the internet's underbelly. But yeah,

I mean, Forbes is like, I think the most, I mean, people are constantly surprised that Forbes is just a content mill, like some of the worst offenders out there. All you do is just publish, I mean, email and a piece,

and the odds are it's going to go up on Forbes.com and it's going to look like, a legitimate piece and it's going to have the imprimatur of, you know, high-level journalism. But no, this is just like a, this is like, it's, it's a blog spot, you know. I mean, the difference is vanishingly small. Think of how many art requests you get on a given day and how strong out you feel. Just imagine if there were 3,000 writers. That's more than the New York Times has reporters.

Yeah, it's crazy. Three thousand. We got time for one more thing. Do you want to hear Aaron Boone, Yankees manager, stumping for the yet? network on Slink television or do we want to read negative reviews of the Lion King? Let's do Lion King. Come on, we already did it. Department of Pans, I'll made it put these together. Thank you, Chris.

From the Department of Pans, I always love these because it's kind of like an anti-blurb. Here's what you will not see on the Lion King commercial attributed or the poster in the old days. Anthony Lane at the New Yorker rarely has brand recognition soared to such fetishistic heights. And I regret to inform you that aside from updating of the vocal cast, the most blatant discrepancy between the old old and the new is a very slight increase in the comedy of flatulence. So that's Anthony Lane on the lane.

Garrison at the Mad About Movies podcast. Just about every choice John Favreau made as director was the wrong choice. And his insistence on 100% realism in a film in which animals talk, sing and do choreography makes my head hurt. Makes my head hurt would be great for the for the ad with the soaring music on a network television. and our friend and colleague Rob Harvilla. Anytime you get Harvilla on the poster, it's great with an anti-blower. Yes. He writes Disney's money-grubbing empire.

We're already off to a great start there, by the way. Disney's money-grubbing empire indeed encompasses everything that the light touches. Even those parts, the light already quite lucratively touched. May we all live long enough to see our favorite kids movies transformed, not ruined exactly, and certainly not improved, into spirited and yet bloodless technological marvels. A spirited and yet bloodless technological marvel. That is, that, that, that's a great one right there.

What an anti-blurb. Congrats to Rob for writing the seminal blurb about the lion game. Good usage there. Time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. God, okay. Pause now for David to groan theatrically. Oh, man. The last winner was fantastic yeasts and where to find them.

Fantastic yeasts and where to find them. was good stuff. I've got a British Open or Open Championship pun for you, David. It's from an article in something called Omnisport, which was syndicated on Yahoo. And it's about, obviously, we alter when we need, when sports news breaks, we turn to Omnisport. It's about the English golfer Lee Westwood, whose girlfriend, Helen's story was his catty last weekend in Northern Ireland at the Open Championship. And Leo Westwood says, she doesn't know too much about golf, but she knows a lot about the way my mind works. But what you need to know, David, is that a golfer named Lee Westwood had his girlfriend as his caddy at the Open Championship. What is the Omnisport strained pun headline?

Girlfriend. Caddy. I mean, no more musicals. I feel we did. There's no more rain in Spain on the plane in here. Is that my, yes? This is so hard. Caddy.

Is Caddy in the headline? Can I get that? Is there a pun? Is there a play on Caddy? Caddy is in it but not as a pun. No, it is not the pun. I think, let me tell you this. Open is the pun word.

Okay, it's not who's your catty or something. The open, open relationship? Oh. Westwood enjoying the open relationship. with catty girlfriend is the Omnisport headline Open Oh man

Capital Open capital open Capital O open I'm looking this up now Westwood enjoying open relationship with catty girlfriend That a picture of them kissing on the Omnisport Congratulations to the folks

at Omnisport for winning this weekend this week's This week excuse me Strain pun headline He is David Shoemaker I'm Brian Curtis Chris Almeida helps us

With Research Jim Cunningham produces this show More lukewarm takes about the media on Friday. Talk to you then, David. See you later, Brian. Whatever life is, I wanted to be here in the balcony of the Winter Garden, watching cats climb up and down the walls.

Broadcasting on a pirate radio to an audience of 100 people, you know. 3,000. Maybe this doesn't matter. I talked about my favorite app, my go-to karaoke song, and my inspiration for fighting climate change on Now This News. It was one of the most magical nights of my life Because you, I mean, I'll just put you a little bit on the spot But you

I'm allergic to cats Yes I'm allergic to cats You know, as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs Is to go on the air today Take it away, dancing cats Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum I think that's a question that's worth asking me

No way