The Press Box - Dr. Seuss Uncanceled. Plus, Listener Mail.

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down the Dr. Seuss controversy that has resulted in six of his books no longer being published. They discuss this news in relation to cancel culture and how it��s being covered in the media (3:45). Then Listener Mail, where they answer your questions about 'New York Times' columnist David Brooks, sports gambling, the bad headline debate, and more (26:40). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of The Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained Pun-Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bacari Sellers podcast tackles the most pressing current events through conversations and interviews with high-profile guests. Building upon his experience in South Carolina government and politics and his experience as a lawyer, Sellers will talk to his guests about all topics from the world of politics. Check out the Bacari Sellers podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, after the Wall Street Journal editorial board took a swipe at Donald Trump, Trump replied in a statement, nobody cares much about the Wall Street Journal editorial anymore. What I want to know is, do you care about the Wall Street Journal?

Yes, I carry very deeply. And because I know our friend Jason Gay is listening to this, I care even more so. First of all, I just want to make a comment. I used to have a boss, a grand old man of a certain age. He was 70 plus at the time. And we had this running g-running riff in the office because you would go into his office and he'd be like, hey, how's it going? And you'd have a good conversation. You'd go in several times a day.

He's very warm, very jokey, very, very, you know, collegial. And then at some point in the day, you would receive a memo that had been dictated by him at some point in the, between the times, you'd have a wonderful conversation where he just ripped you to shreds for like three pages. And, you know, his assistant is typing it up as you're just like slapping him on the back. this is what Donald Trump's missives are like now, right? Without the Twitter, without tweets to be able to feel like we're seeing into his soul, it feels like we're just getting this completely out of time, out of

context, just lengthy memos dictated by a confused old man, which I guess is probably true. But yes, I this is obviously just Trump being angsty and

Trumpian. Although I think, that, you know, the mainstream media are people that we follow on Twitter do care very much about Wall Street Journal editorials because otherwise they wouldn't be able to do their weekly tweet of like, look what the Wall Street Journal editorial

is saying compared to what their news division is saying and how unlike the two things are, right? That's very important for the way that we engage with media. Yeah. I mean, we care about a lot of things in the Wall Street Journal. We care about Ben Cohen. Oh, yeah. We care about

Ben Mullen. We care about multiple Wall Street Journal Benz, you might say. To your point about Trump and statements, are we missing a word here? Nobody cares much about the Wall Street Journal editorial anymore? Like the editorial board, editorial

page? Is there a single editorial we don't care about much anymore? I think he's saying the art of the Wall Street Journal editorial, right? Or the genre of the Wall Street Journal editorial. He's actually... As an archetype. Yes, exactly. As if you're writing a column,

You know, the political reporter in 2021, the Wall Street Journal editorial. No, I see. So it's sort of a little bit of a different level of thinking from Trump. This is finally the new Trump has arrived. And he's trying to cancel the Wall Street Journal. Coming up on today's show, the non-cancellation of Dr. Seuss. Plus, we answer your listener mail, including the question, what the hell is going on with New York Times columnist David Brooks.

All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Remember Infrastructure Week, David? Oh, I remember. Well, this week is Dr. Seuss Books I've never heard of despite being a father of young children week. Mm-hmm. Our listener, Fight Doctor, asks, can you guys please address how conservative media has flat out stopped covering actual news in order to bring us the worst middle school production of Seussicle ever.

Oh, man. So Dr. Seuss has been canceled. You know, some of that I follow, I don't, I watch Fox News for the purposes of the show. Occasionally I watch it take the temperature of what's going on and a lot of the world. I must say on a day-to-day basis, I pay more attention to the goings on at Fox through like various Twitter feeds.

Sure. That are more on the left to, you know, cut and paste clips for everyone to sort of to point and laugh at. Sometimes it gives you a skewed perception of what's going on on Fox News. In this case, it didn't give you enough of the lunacy that was going on on Fox News. I don't know how much of this I'm going to cover accurately, but as far as I can tell, because I was watching this Dr. Sue stuff happened from the very beginning, it started off that a school districts in Virginia, well, to be really precise, they just,

sort of separated or disentangled Dr. Seuss from Read Across America Day, which is a reading holiday for school kids. That was not coincidentally on Dr. Seuss's birthday, that this one school district decided to say, we're making sure this is not Dr. Seuss Day. This is just reading day, because, as some people may know, Dr. Seuss has some problematic creations in his uvra, if you will. I don't think that comes as news to a lot of people that he, I mean, maybe it's just because I'm a, you know, person who fancies himself a writer and a one-time political cartoonist, but if you go and read a book about Dr. Seuss or a collection of his political cartoons, you will see some really offensive stuff in it. Thankfully, that didn't contaminate some of his greatest works like Green

Eggs and Ham or other places you'll go. But there are definitely some books out there that had some racist and otherwise problematic, sketchy stuff in it. But basically, like, this one school district did this thing, and it was then given this platform and this megaphone by right-wing media who were saying, Dr. Seuss has been canceled. And long story short, there are six Dr. Seuss books that are problematic that are now not canceled, but they're not going to be published anymore because all this attention was given to it. But I think the bigger issue is, at least for a media podcast such as ours, is, yeah, like

the listener at. asked. The conservative movement has decided to completely stop being about anything other than the fear of cancellation. And they are spent, Fox News and all these other outlets are spending all their time talking about the cancellation of Dr. Seuss as if this was the biggest, you know, fear-mongering tactic they could possibly use on an American public. You and I are using the word cancel in a very winking way here. It's probably a important before we get into the Foxverse. To note, under no actual definition has Dr.

Seuss been canceled by anybody. You know what? That's really important to point out. And it's important to point out that we're using it in a winking way. Because just as I would say, or you would say that Fox News is sort of fear mongering over this term, canceled culture, it is exclusively being used on the right in a frightening, the world is ending sort of way. and it is exclusively being used by probably the rest of the world as a ironic statement about the way that some people, the people in the right are viewing the world, right? I mean, like certainly there are people who have been canceled over the past year plus in the, in the, in the colloquial, now colloquial version, a definition of the term.

Dictionary.com has a lengthy entry dedicated to the note, the concept of cancel culture. And there is a very handy Vox explainer-cum essay on the subject that is actually incredibly intelligent that we can link to on the site. There's a lot of reading you can do about the cancel culture movement, if you will. But yes, you and I are using this in a loose sort of winking way. Nothing. Dr. Seuss's, the Dr. Seuss's state is still thriving and Dr. Seuss's memory will presumably continue to live on. Yes, the school district in Virginia, which you mentioned, Luden County, did not ban the books. The books, they put in a sentence statement, are still available in the libraries and classrooms.

As you say, they just deemphasized Dr. Seuss is the singular focus of Read Across America Day. The Dr. Seuss' estate is no longer going to publish these six books, but it is presumably the Dr. Seuss' estates right not to publish these books. right if donald trump's errors someday decide that they do not want to publish the art of the deal anymore they want to take that out of circulation but whatever reason surely we would all agree that that is their right like they own the intellectual they they can take the book out of circulation that is not being canceled in any in any possible way and that is before we fully dive into the media part of here that is the crazy irony of this and it's similar to the mr. potato head thing from when was that last week?

Yes. I'm getting everything confused, but he was, Mr. Potato Head was also not canceled. A couple of things here. One, it's, it's really difficult to draw sort of metaphorical parallel with Donald Trump because he is a racist. But even, like, if the Trump estate, in the example that you gave, 50 years down the road, it's not if they decided to stop publishing the art of the deal. It's if he had published the art of the deal and like 20 years before whatever had

published the art of how good it is to be racist, and they decided to stop publishing the how good it is to be racist book, but kept the art of the deal in print. That's actually the opposite of canceling Donald Trump in a manner of speaking, because it's keeping Donald Trump viable for a generation of non-racist people, right? I mean, like, if he were, if Dr. Seuss were canceled altogether, we wouldn't be talking about six books. We'd be talking about the books that you and I have in our children's libraries, right? But yes, you're right. And the doctor, I mean, the Mr. potato heads slash just potato head issue is is is is pertinent because Donald Trump Jr. was on unsurprisingly on Fox News talking unsurprisingly to Ainsley Earhart and Don Jr. was saying this

week alone they canceled Mr. Potato Head. They canceled the Muppets and you have Oreo cookie chiming in on trans rights. This is in reaction to the Dr. Seuss thing. There are a lot of things that are being deliberately conflated here and more importantly misrepresented. I don't know. I mean, just like I keep saying fear mongering. I don't even, I can't think of a better way to put it. Yeah, and the Muppets are another fake cancellation. The Muppets just became available on Disney Plus. And in order to experience the Muppets, you sit through like a two-second disclaimer about how some of the jokes are, maybe, or portrayals in the Muppet show might be offensive. The Muppets are more available than they've been. And trust me, I was looking for those shows for my kids on YouTube for the last couple of years. Oh, yeah.

You can find little bits of them here and there. But the Muppets have been very spectacularly uncanneled and brought to America and the world. So this is the first just kind of bit of fakery that's going on in the air. The six Dr. Seuss books for the record, if I ran the zoo, scrambled eggs super, not to be confused with green eggs and ham, McAlligut's pool on Beyond Zebra, and to think I saw it on Marbury Street and the cat's quizer. Those are these six books that are no longer going to be published.

Philip Bump of the Washington Post noticed something very interesting on Fox News, David. As they talked about this story over and over again, they did not show the problematic pictures from those books when they were doing the segment. They showed instead the covers of books that nobody is talking about like the cat in the hat. And Horton hears a who. They'll be like, oh my gosh, the cat in the hat has gotten. Oh, nothing happened to the cat in the hat. Now, if you are not willing to show those pictures on your air,

because they may be offensive, they might anger some members of your viewing public. Isn't that telling? Philip Bump asks, doesn't that kind of prove the point? because if they were so benign and if they were so if something horrible why would you just put them on fox news let's just show the pictures right now oh wait oh you're not you're showing something else and as he pointed out in this column that's the tell yeah that's the tell of this whole thing i mean yes that's of course the tell you know sane people can argue about well i mean we can argue about whether or not there's

even an intelligent conversation to be had about like the ideology of the cancel culture movement or whatever, maybe there's a conversation to be had about whether or not it's a problem for America. But certainly it's not like going to take place in a bad faith Twitter conversation between like Don Jr. Barri Weiss and a Twitter egg that's like Dana Whitefans 888, you know.

And that's sort of what's going on. You're like the people who are dining out on cancel culture alarmism, you know, they know they know that what they're doing, they don't care about the tell because they know what they're doing is BS, right? They don't want to solve the problem of cancel culture. They want to inflate cancel culture into a straw man so big and so powerful that it can win the presidency in four years, right?

I mean, like, this is, this is what they have. Yeah, exactly. More immediately, right? They want to take back the House of Representatives. Mm-hmm. Take back the Senate. But isn't it amazing how cultural issues and maybe that word is even doing an issue like Mr. Patea, head or Dr. Seuss way too much credit that they've just completely crowded out political issues on

the right. There's no more politics. Philip Bump was noting this too. It's all about this stuff. Remember, the Republicans did not write a platform. A new platform last time out of their convention. It was just like, we're going to wait for an inevitable controversy that isn't a controversy. And that's going to be our platform.

Well, I mean, I don't want to get in too deep on what merits political discourse and what doesn't, but for as long as we've been talking about how the right wing is focusing on conservative quote unquote social issues and where at the same time that their leaders are focusing on, you know, tax breaks for the wealthy and everything else. I mean, that's sort of the direction the party's been pushing, right? And I mean, even the past couple of elections have seen a lot of attention paid to ephemeral. or non-existent social issues and I'm not even talking about the real divisive ones talking about things like the liberals are coming to take away your football or to take away whatever

your camouflage and at the expense of any sort of serious discourse and frankly it's been effective you know it's easy to point of this and laugh and I hope that the world would be pointing at I mean the entire electorate will be pointing and laughing

you know over the next in two years and in four years But this is an outgrowth of a deliberate political, I mean, yeah, political, you know, tactic that's been successful. So I think it's two things. I think you're right. It is a potentially, it has been in the past, certainly, and is a potentially really effective political tactic. It's also a really effective tactic of billing airtime and finding out what your new marching orders are at Fox News. our friend Nick Field sent us a story pointing out that like strangely MSNBC's ratings and CNN's ratings have been up since the Trump presidency ended and Fox Newses are down. That's usually an inversion of what happens when a party is out of power the other that that party's corresponding news network, their ratings go up because it's more fun, right, to be like, this is an outrage. This is terrible. But maybe Trump was such a unifying storyline for Fox News. You know, people are mean to Trump.

Aha, we got it. Today we're going to attack the people being mean to Trump. Or we're going to attack the people that are trying to prevent Trump from stealing the election, whatever it is. That was such an effective marching order that now that that's gone, what do we do now? Well, I mean, it probably didn't help the continued ratings for places like Fox News that they effectively were part of a Trump death cult, right? That like when the comet flies by and doesn't, in fact, take you all up to heaven, then that leads to a lot of disappointment with. within the audience, right? So, yeah, I mean, this is obviously a very particular presidency, or, you know, changing of the guard in a lot of different ways. But you're right, they have to

figure out what's going to work on the networks now. They have to figure out what's going to, you know, what's going to drive viewership. I mean, this is interesting. I don't, I'm not sure that it's helpful, though, with that perspective to, like, keep going further and further down the same path of grievance, right? I mean, to have Donald Trump on there, to have, you know, Trump's former press secretary as a new contributor. I understand why in every isolated instant they might make that decision. But, you know, I mean, the reason why conservatives around the country hate Mitt Romney right now is not because he said that he wanted to cancel Sesame Street, right? I mean, that was, that was a good, that was a good punchline for like Democrats to use

when he was running for president, but they hate Mitt Romney because he's not sufficiently socially conservative for them or, you know, ideologically in step for them. Maybe this will work for ratings. My guess is, over the long view, they're going to have to pivot,

even though we keep saying that and we keep thinking they've just, I mean, how many times over the past four months did we think we were pointing and watching Fox News pivoting away from the Trump years? And now we have Don Trump on their, Don Jr., talking about Mr. Potato and Dr. Seuss being victims of cancel culture?

Well, and it may it may allow you to eat innings. There's going to be an inevitable Biden scandal. There's going to be an inevitable Biden, massive Biden failure at some level of government. Either a bill goes down or something happens to his administration. And then you pounce on that, of course. But this gets you through the day. COVID bill broadly popular. Eh, let's not worry about that.

You know, Biden's nominees other than Aaron Tannen, getting confirmed. Yeah, let's not worry about that. So let's just, this gets you by the day, right? This is Tuesday. This is Wednesday. Is Dr. Seuss Day. And we'll make some hay out of that. And as you say, it's really easy.

It's not a hard segment to do on Fox, which is why they've been talking about it so much. Can I ask you a really dumb and potentially rhetorical question? Please. Does it matter that the basis of all of these arguments are not true, more so than it would matter if Fox is pushing a political argument that's not true or smearing somebody in some other way? I mean, like, is there a worry that this, that the truth of this will become widespread

in a way that like the details of a political dispute will not? That's really good question. So it's like, is this like a, is the truthiness of politics more important than the truthiness of like random cultural grievance? Yeah. You know, the usual right-wing Fox playbook is something like Needles, California took a Christmas tree out of the town square.

Therefore, you know, Christmas is under attack. Our identity is under attack. Everything is under attack. The world is going to hell. America is going to hell. Please, you know, do something about it. Right? That's the usual playbook.

I would think if we looked at those instances that they blow up into national stories, I would say half of them are actually what they are purported to be. and probably less than half are just not real or you know that it was like somebody said something on a city council but it was not policy and that person has a right to say that. You know what I mean? It just doesn't, I don't know. I don't get a sense that these are,

I guess I would say the big truth behind their attacks on both are probably pretty similar. All right. And I'd say it's just, it's kind of a crapshoot whether it's actually. And then you look at this one. I mean, I remember I kind of consume this.

a tweet for a while and then just like eventually read the stories like, oh, this does nothing happened here. Nothing has happened to Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss is fine and his magical illustrations are still alive. I do think we should just say one thing that when you talk about Trump and post Trump quote unquote and all that stuff, this fits perfectly into the Donald Trump political playbook, right? This is this is an I'll quote Philip Bump for the final time in the segment. It's not that some Dr. Seuss books are being taken out of rotation, it's that Seuss is a benchmark for a particular sort of American upbringing. Calling out Seuss's infrequent racist imagery is therefore an attack on that view of

American identity. It's a short hop from here to rhetoric demanding that we make America great again. It's all part of the same thing. Sure. This is, and if Donald Trump were president right now, he would be tweeting about Dr. Seuss. Yeah. If Donald Trump had a Twitter account right now he'd be tweeting about Dr. Seuss. The weird thing about the Seuss part of it, you're right, you're absolutely right. I mean, and I think that when everybody's talking about the Muppets or Mr. Potato Head or Dr. Seuss, yes, they're just deliberately calling back to the childhoods that you and I shared and that even like the generation or two before us all shared and saying, you know, that's under assault,

that's under attack, that's being taken away. Our kids won't have the same opportunities to read those things, to engage with those things that we had. It's all bullshit, but that's clearly what they're saying. think that there's like i don't know the truthiness different it will matter at all in this but it is sort of interesting i think in general the dr suz argument because in the broader kind of quote unquote cancel culture sphere doctors the dr sus one actually presents with the opportunity of having a really meaningful and intelligent conversation about authors beloved creators who are

problematic and then evolve or who who are problematic but whose entire body of work is not, which I don't think that's going to, like, lead to any great eureka moments in right-wing media, but more so than some of the other cancellations over the past year or two, this one actually has the ability to lead to, like, cogent, high-level conversation. That won't be the case, you know. But it is, but it is an intriguing and interesting choice of subjects for them. I would hope so, and I would love to read some good pieces about this once the kind of nutty noise dies down. But so many of the, even the, like, well-intended think pieces I read over the last 48 hours about this, all started out like, you know, you shouldn't do this.

Oh, wait, that didn't happen. Oh, now, now they should not. Now, look, I'm a liberal and I feel, but I even, I feel, oh, wait, that never actually happened. There's nothing to pivot on here. Yeah. There's just nothing. And you're right. Somebody will write like a big essay about that and it'll be really interesting.

But it's hard to write an op-ed about this because other than to say Fox News is being crazy, because nothing actually happened. So it sort of nukes your think piece before you even get to like the fourth paragraph turn, you know, where you write that topic sentence. Like, ooh, now I'm going to take the reader in a slightly different direction. You don't even get there. Yeah. You don't even get there.

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 your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. I mentioned Nera Tandon. Her nomination as director of the Office of Management and Budget was withdrawn. Thanks to opposition to her mean tweets. It was an overword Twitter joke, David, to write, so near a yet so far. Thanks to Mitchell, Tybalt. for that. Someone named Becca Brass put up on Twitter, one of these prompts, you know, these prompts that get everybody to make jokes. Bass wrote, quote, a murder of crows, a pod of whales,

a leap of leopards. What would describe a group in your specialty? So people could come up with some very good responses here. And on the other hand of economists, a pedantry of translators. an insecurity of authors. A layoff of journalists. An indecision of editors. And my favorite, a compromise of publisher. Thanks to El Horse for bringing that to our attention. And finally, David, one of the loudest voices on Sue Skate, you mentioned, Donald Trump Jr.

You know, that very blue-collar man of the people, Don Jr. It was an overword Twitter joker, or maybe just a good. good joke to write Wharton, here's a coup. Wharton, here's a coup. Thanks to Andrew 3,000. I was going to say to you earlier,

one thing I hate about any Dr. Seuss story in the media is that everybody tries to do a Dr. Seuss poetry rip-off. Mm-hmm. And I have just, like, for my entire life, been anti-Dr. Seuss parodies. That just seems like a very very low-yield form of journalism.

Totally. But I will make an exception for Wharton. Here's a coup. If you uncanceled the art of Dr. Seuss parody, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, let us do a little listener mail.

Simon Pollock wants us to talk about New York Times columnist David Brooks. Ooh, what a story this was. some amazing reporting in BuzzFeed from Craig Silverman and Ryan Mack. First, they reported that David Brooks wrote what the authors called a, quote, 900 word ode to Facebook groups and how they foster online communities around the world. Now, that kind of sounds like a dreamy David Brooks column about civilian. But Brooks actually wrote it for Facebook's corporate site.

And the New York Times didn't know he wrote it. for Facebook's corporate site. So strike one. Then BuzzFeed, Silverman, and Mac found another issue. David Brooks runs this project at the Aspen Institute called Weave. He gets a salary from the Aspen Institute for running the project. And the project is partially funded by Facebook. As Silverman and Mac write, quote,

Brooks published multiple columns that promote Weave, in addition to writing pieces that mentioned Facebook, its founder Mark Zuckerberg and the company's products without disclosing that Facebook gave $250,000 to the Weave project. The Times is, quote, reviewing David Brooks's work. By the way, great journalism scandal verb. We are reviewing his work. It means reading, investigating, etc.

Anyway, your take on David Brooks. Oh, I mean, this is just terrible. I mean, listen, the stakes of journalistic malfeasance are usually rather low, right? I mean, with the exception of straight up propaganda for a dictatorship or, you know, lying about weapons of mass destruction, the destruction that brings a country into war, this sort of thing specific to the genre that David Brooks is being accused of here

is, like I said, a pretty, like, low stakes sense. and yet I cannot imagine something more cut and dried and like potentially career ending or you know more fireable more actionable than what's going on right here now listen we don't know all the details obviously but even a best case scenario

like he is taking this money from Facebook and is writing positive things about Facebook that's like I don't really need to know much more than that. And I know that we have a lot of conversations on this show about sort of writer platforms and what is afforded you by social media and what is afforded you by the publication that you write for. How much is yours? How much is theirs? You know, David Brooks is a bestselling author. David Brooks is a lot of things. But David Brooks is identified as a New York Times op-ed writer. I mean, that is going to be on his tombstone, right? And so he,

I don't know what his contract says, but the idea that he'd be making more money from another source and letting that affect his work for the New York Times or just the first half of that, that he's making more money from another source and not disclosing it publicly is problematic enough.

That's all you need to know. This is a huge catastrophe. And if the New York Times fired him on the spot, I wouldn't be shocked or upset. That's kind of, it's like, it is what it is. is. It's really clear. Can you imagine if you're a reporter at the New York Times and covers Facebook, this huge subject for the paper, it's huge subject for the country,

this great source of muckraking we've seen at the Times and elsewhere over the last couple years, and a guy who is writing opinion columns is basically indirectly or maybe even directly, I guess, let's call it indirectly for the moment, getting paid by Facebook, and is promoting Facebook in his column and is writing. freebies for Facebook's corporate site, I would be so pissed. Yeah. Yeah.

I'd be so pissed. And I'd just be like, wait a second, you know, you're judging me on my ability to pull news out of that company and break stories. And this is happening at the same paper. Yeah. And we seemingly know, I just, yeah, I mean, I would be, I would be furious. I just, I feel like you and I have had several versions of this conversation. And to me, you mentioned David Brooks, the Times column being on his tombstone.

We get to this certain kind of journalist, usually a very successful journalist, who wants all the goodies that journalism can bring them, the status, the gravitas, the, you know, the platform of the New York Times, but they also want all the goodies offered to them by anti-journalistic activities. You want both. And they refuse to choose. If David Brooks wants to go off and do this, good for him. Why not?

Or if David Brooks wants to stay and be a New York Times columnist and not get into all these conflicts, that's fine too. But they won't choose. They want to have it all. Then you can't, at some point, you can't have it all. And it's an insult to people who don't have it all, right? Who specifically say, I can't do that because that would be no good as a journalist. I can't, I cannot accept that money. I cannot do that thing.

And yet you just try to do everything. Yes. I mean, I don't know what direction the story is going to go, but it wouldn't surprise me if sort of the hesitation on the part of the New York Times. Certainly there's a lot of hesitation because of the stature of the person. person of Brooks and how much he's meant to the paper, but there has to be some, it wouldn't surprise me if there's some hesitation based on the fact that, like, as cut and dried as this is, it's going to lead to a lot of other questions, right? Like, what Brooks did, even if we agree that, that, you know, that accepting money for his, aspen Institute thing is beyond the pale, well, there's a lot of people,

you know, under New York Times employee who are accepting money to give speeches to places like Facebook, you know, I mean, there's a lot of, there's, there's a lot of kind of ancillary ways that people who are not quite David Brooks level, but still a high profile make money outside of their normal jobs. And a lot of questions, and people are going to start rightfully asking questions about that too. Now, I don't begrudge anybody the ability to make a living or to make more than a living than buy themselves a fancy vacation home or whatever else. But you know when you're making these sorts of decisions that it's the wrong thing to do. I mean, I just can't, I just can't imagine what anybody inside the New York Times would be thinking right now other than this is an

enormous problem. I mean, he just can't, this is just, this is, this is just a complete absence of, of, of faith and, and what we do here. And, and, I don't know, I, I, I, I agree with you. I, I just, I just don't, I just can't imagine what's going to, how much longer this could possibly drag on. I don't know what the next phase would possibly look like if, unless it were, you know, David Brooks and the New York Times

have decided to part ways. But I agree. Yeah, and who knows? You know, they may take their time on this because as you say, he's a big star over there and all that stuff and they want to do it. And also, right, they've had, a lot of things have happened at the New York Times

with the last couple weeks. So it's all part of one, you know, this is very different, but it's also all, you know, surely those things are in the back of their minds as they make this decision. Oh, yeah. I mean, and it will, regardless,

I mean, this will, if David Brooks leaves, and, I mean, if David Brooks leaves of his own accord, I think everyone will be able to read into that exactly what that meant, but, you know, someone of his statute will probably be afforded that opportunity that someone who's not as famous as him would not get. But this will definitely be added to the checklist of James Bennett and Bari Weiss and all the other, quote, unquote, conservatives that have been forced out, quote unquote, forced out at the New York Times, despite the fact that this is a very specific, very straightforward case. So, you know, you know, there are more, there are more issues kind of surrounding this than there really need to be.

But it's, that's a, that's a, you know, reflection of reality that those things will be tied together. I'm already depressed by that Fox News segment. David Brooks was hounded out of the New York Times because he's conservative. Come on, man. Come on. This is from Kenneth. Should CNN be criticized for their Cuomo Times Cuomo interviews from last spring and summer, was too cute by half then, looks even worse. now.

Well, I mean, sure, you can criticize them. I don't know what you thought you were watching. If you were, if you're offended by that in retrospect, um, it just seems like, like too cute by half sort of is kind of what they're going for. I mean, not just seeing in specifically, but like. Yes. Like any, any other channel in that situation would do the same thing. And I, and, and maybe we should be offended on some in some, in some.

broader way about the direction of cable news, but those were, what we've learned about Cuomo over the past several weeks does not somehow make those interviews more like saccharin or duplicitous or anything else. I mean, it was pretty self-evident at the time, even if you're a fan of both Cuomo's. Yeah, I think, I guess the argument would be, this is this just shows why it's such a bad idea to get into that thing to begin with you know to just bring on a politician it's like oh it's my brother the politician we got this little road show going on here on television yeah no no you can you can you can definitely make the case that that the same reason that Andrew Cuomo is now saying i mean sorry that Chris Cuomo is now saying

I know it's we all are aware it's going with my brother and I won't be commenting on it for obvious reasons, those obvious reasons should logically have extended retroactively into those interviews he did with his brother. Yes, that is a coherent logical argument. But as far as, like, I'm not going to, like, you know, clutch my pearls over a silly segment that was sort of clear at the time. Well, and it was all based on what we talked about the other day, which was that he wrote governor of New York is saving everybody from the coronavirus. That's the only way those segments would have worked, right? It was that it was that Andrew Cuomo was so obviously doing a great job with the thinking that he can come on here and do kind of a thing. It was like, oh, I'm going to

bring my brother on and we'll all celebrate the great work he's doing with the coronavirus, as opposed to doing a serious, like if his work had been in more, coming under more scrutiny at that point, they would have never agreed to that. It would have never happened at the time. Yeah, but it's just in terms of the Cuomo on Cuomo thing. I mean, if, if Chris, Cuomo had been like me doing interviews if you know nine months ago is that me doing interviews of my brother is inherently problematic in the journal in terms of journalistic integrity so i am going to facilitate him being interviewed by Anderson cooper on a regular basis i don't know that that makes it any better even if he would have taken the correct route in terms of journalism rights and wrongs

right i mean well though i would be pissed if i was another host or another reporter there and i was trying to get Andrew Cuomo and he was only going on with his brother then you would have been piss. Right now you're saying thank God that wasn't me who is like, you know, massaging Monair for three months or however, you know. Yeah, if you would have massaged him. No, maybe they would have done a totally different interview. Yeah, true.

From Alex Stewart, Mike Pence is only 61. He should be around for another few election cycles. Has there ever been another VP who has no prospects with his party? Dan Quail never amounted to much, but pro-Bush Republicans never threatened to hang him. Hashtag I think that's right. Oh, man. It is, listen, I've always thought that he would have a hard time being a national politician.

And he didn't really need more evidence from the fact that he was a terrible national politician before Trump. I don't, and Trump's never rubbed off, rubbed his fairy dust off on anyone. No, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to at all. But I think if there was ever any doubt in your mind that Pence's, you know, outlook was pretty limited. It was a tweet that he said, now, when was this yesterday, the day before? He published a, he published a column. And all I remember is the end of the tweet that he was just like, my first column for at the daily signal.

I was just like, oh, not only are you relegated to writing for the daily signal, but you have like apparently a contract to be a regular writer for them. That's not like the, not the optimum situation for like the next big thing of reporting. Republican politics to be the place for them to be sitting, I guess. Some personal news. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, he's a bad politician. I mean, he's not like he's, he is.

Is he a bad politician or is he just fallen prey to what almost everybody who worked for Trump has fallen prey to? I don't think it's beneficial for anyone to look like a caricature of a national politician in an era where the only thing either party wants. with Joe Biden accepted is no blood. With one very notable exception who is... No, but like, but every year, I mean, yes, yeah. And there's a lot of reasons for that.

But like, but, you know, new blood, fresh faces, not fresh faces, but on the political scene. I mean, this is what animates almost every campaign. And I just can't imagine the Republican Party running anybody. I don't think we've even seen who's going to be the Republican nominee in four years. Like, I mean, we've seen them, I'm sure. but like, I think looking at all these kind of established politicians is the wrong way to look. And I think Mike Pence is above, I mean, even if they, even if I'm wrong and even if this is, you know,

Nikki Haley and Matt Gates facing off for the Republican nomination, I just think that looking like literally, looking and sounding and acting like a bad movie Republican politician is not going to win any votes now or in the future. So Alex's question, when we talk about VPs with no process, suspects. You know, let's not gloss over Dick Cheney, who was not politically viable by the end of the Bush administration. Like, you know, he did. Of course, he was not running for president prior for multiple reasons, but he would not have been a viable presidential candidate in 2008. So I guess that's somewhat, somewhat analogous Dan Quayle. Of course, is a great example. And you know what? Did everybody think Joe Biden was a super viable political candidate in

either 2016 or 2020? No, certainly not. No, certainly not. Dick Cheney was, is obviously a very special case because his lack of viability, he was out of politics, you know, for the most part, before he started the search committee for himself to be Trump's vice president. But his political power from the vice presidency basically emanated from the fact that he was not a viable politician on his own. He didn't need to worry about his job prospects. He needed to worry about the accumulation of power, of winning battles. All he cared about was the success of his his ideology.

Maybe that's George W. Bush's ideology. I think that's sort of beside the point. But, you know, Dan Quail was a politician with the future. So that's a good point of comparison. Joe Biden, I think, was seen in a lot of ways as a cheney-esque figure, if not evil, so much, but like someone who is more committed to the success of the administration than he was about his own political future. And whether or not we were all very wrong about that or the fact that or just that Biden's,

you know, that Trump rewrote what in everyone's political futures look like, I guess is an open question. But yeah, I mean, it's hard to imagine someone who was trying to set them up for, set themselves up for to be a future president and who failed so miserably. Yeah. And if we need anybody else, let's look at the rest of the potential 20, 24 Republican field. Hello, Nikki Haley.

Nikki Haley, who was supposed to be Donald Trump's vice president. You remember when he was going to fire Mike Pence and bring on Nikki Haley? That was wild. All right, David, this is from Andrew Grainning. Mike Floreo said on Jimmy Trina's pod that the NFL is embracing sports gambling. How soon do you think we see an odds desk on a network pregame show? Will we see it on college shows? I noticed the ticker on CBS HQ includes a score who covered in the over under.

Is this the future? can I say a word about gambling content for just a second? Please. Obviously coming on huge. You know, their podcasts, there's some dedicated shows in the ESPN and Fox World about this. I am not totally convinced this is going to become the A subject of our daily sports lives. It enhances our interest in sports. If you tell me there's going to be a Jimmy the Greek style figure pretty soon on the network pregame shows, you know, talking about the odds and stuff like that.

but I think people kind of get a little too carried away and think it's like the only way people are going to consume sports is about betting on sports. I don't know that I'm ready to concede that yet. And to me it feels like the B or the C story about the big football game of the week. So it's going to be more present. It's going to be more out loud. We'll admit that there's a line and gambling is happening, sure. But I don't know. I'm not quite as bullish on all this as some people.

What do you think? I agree. I do, I can easily see a Jimmy the Greek style figure, as you said, on one of the NFL studio shows, because they've never shown any hesitation to cram an extra person into any of those studios. And I can see them, you know, sort of helping to inform the general public about how this kind of conversation takes place. I definitely think the public as a whole is more literate in gambling ease than they were 10 years ago or even five years ago. And people like our boss Bill Simmons have done a lot to help that. I think that I think that, I mean, as I encounter it on a regular basis, the gambling lines, I mean, like when when Bill does guess the line, you know, with cousin Sal or when they or when they when they pick the overunders at the beginning of the NBA season with Joe Howie.

or whatever. To me, that's just an interesting lens through which to have the same conversation that you'd be having without it, right? I mean, it's sort of like, it's a very, it is a baseline way to say, are the, you know, Indiana Pacer's going to be better or worse than you and I think they're going to be, or than the, you know, the conventional wisdom thinks are going to be. Yeah. And it's a relate, and it's about the relationship between Bill and Cousin's out. Yeah. It's about gambling, but it's mostly to me or the least where the way I consume, it's like about these, this great relationship that I like to listen to. You're right. And in a in a closed world where, you know, a closed universe where the only two people talking are Bill

and Sal or Bill and House, you kind of need the baseline, right? You need, you need like the referee. And in this case, it's really easy to point at, you know, sportsbets.com. I don't know if that's a real site, but I guess it is. I'm not promoting them. And, and say, we're just going to find out an Aspen Institute style conflict here. Yeah. Keep those checks coming in, sportsbets.com. But you, But you get to pick this like, you know, online sort of robot and say that they get to, they're the baseline for this conversation that we're going to have. You know, I just don't think, I do think we're going to see a lot more of it. And I think that there's going to be times where you and I are going to be sitting here in the next year,

the next two years and having conversations about how surprised we are that some aspect of it is more prominent than, you know, than maybe we expected it to be. But, I mean, let's be honest, sports conversations, the ones that we're seeing in the studio shows, even the ones that we hear from the booth as we're watching the games, it's not like there's a lack of things to talk about. More often than not, there's an overabundance of things to talk about, and what we're seeing is them dumbing it down and cramming it into two brief segments and that sort of thing.

I'm not sure that talking about an over-underer on a given play is going to do anything. When Jimmy the Greek did it, I mean, certainly he was, he was doing, I mean, he was talking about gambling lines, but it was almost like a wink, you know? It was a way that he could talk about things that people could just point. I mean, could identify with it. It's different than everybody else. But I don't think it's necessarily helpful to the average viewer to be given information that way. Yeah.

And I think in those days, he actually did it without the lines. It was kind of more that, you know, I think they're going to win big. You kind of give the wink to the audience. This is from our friend Michael Mason. I did like this one. I was hoping you guys could settle the bad headline reply guy debate for me because I've never fully understood it. when a reporter posts their article on Twitter, and whether because the headline is to both-sides,

or misleading or whatever, and people reply negatively, the reporter inevitably pushes back with something like, I don't write the headlines, or you didn't read the piece, or both. These are my questions. Who writes the headlines, and why doesn't the reporter write them? Two, if the headline mischaracterizes a piece, shouldn't the reporter take more issue with the headline writer instead of the readers? And number three, it seems like some reporters devalue the importance of an appropriate headline, or am I wrong? It seems to me, headlines have always been really important well before the days of Twitter. I love this email, because this is something we see on Twitter all the time. There is so much to dig into here, too. Let's just say, first of all, it is a

very time-honored reporter trick to blame their editor for lots of things, including the headline. So when you write an article and your subject calls you or the PR guy of the subject calls you and says, man, that headline, what's the deal with that? I didn't write the headline. Or my editor wrote the headline. That's just kind of, I feel used as a get out of jail-free card a lot of the time. Uh-huh. Where you just sort of plead ignorance.

It may also be true. In fact, I'm certain most 99% of cases it is true. But you can just sort of distance from it, right? That's the way people maintain relationships. And in a slightly larger view, you know, they always say that like, I mean, journalist, writers, anybody that has a public profile on Twitter will always say, you know, you can get a hundred complimentary tweets about something that you wrote, but if you get one mean tweet, that's the tweet that's going to stick with you for a day or a week or whatever.

In the same way, you might get 100 mean tweets, but the one where someone complains about something that your editor took out, that it's your editor's fault that there is a complaint, that's the one you're going to remember for the rest of your life, right? And you will always, you will always be having conversations with your other writers saying just like, well, I thought it was a pretty good piece. Man, if only Brian hadn't taken out that great kicker I had, then I wouldn't have got that one complaint tweet. So yeah, we do, we do, it's easy to blame stuff on your editors, that's for sure. Now, the fact of the matter is editors or copy desks at some newspapers or some, you know,

old school outlets are solely responsible for writing the headlines of these stories. I mean, it's, you might, you or I might submit. your Google Doc with a headline suggestion. That might make it through, you know? I mean, especially in the case of if you really want to, if it's like a particular construction, a great pun perhaps, and you really want to fight for it, you will make it clear to your editor that this is the thing,

this needs to be the title. I will say as an aside, in 2021, even the editors have a wonderful out on this where they can like use that as an alternate headline that only appears on the homepage or give you your, give you your headline on the story page, but when it goes out on a Twitter or on the homepage of the ringer.com, it's the one that

they want. You know, there's a lot of different ways. Because now they're like four headlines to go to a piece. The Twitter headline, right, everything. Exactly. But yeah, I mean, for the most part, especially in hard news, newspapers and especially, like I said, especially like institutional

newspapers, they have people who are in charge of writing the headlines. I mean, it's a very specific you're like the, it's like the Bruce Valanche role at the New York Times, you're like the patter writer, you make these things manageable for the people, for the audience who's going to read it, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's, I'm imagining Bruce Valanche sitting in the Times newsroom, just, just, uh, typing out headlines. It's sort of the opposite of Bruce Valanche, I guess, because it's just sort of like how dry and

and simplistic can we be. But, uh, but, but I guess that it's understandable, right? If someone has a problem with something that you wrote, inevitably, the headline, no matter who, who wrote it is not going to contain the multitudes that you perceive the piece you've written to contain. Yes. Yes. I mean, I would also add, you're right,

a lot of news headlines are pretty straight and boring, but even places like the New York Times have really turned the dial when they're talking about headlines. Right? Their headlines are more interesting than they've ever been. And in that, I think I'm pretty safe and same. Because so they're trying to torque it up a little bit, put more voice into it so that people on Twitter click on it.

So it's not just your boring normal New York Times. line. Yeah. So that probably introduces a little more, you know, a little more, well, maybe somebody gets mad at it or something like that. I find the whole, I find most of these conversations on Twitter really boring and really tedious. Sometimes they're right. And sometimes, but this whole thing of, I am upset at your framing of the story. And then you look at the piece and it's just fine. You know, it, it really isn't worth the 19 reply guys who come in to pile on to it. Yeah. I find a lot of that's just kind of ridiculous. And there's just word, again, sometimes it's right.

Sometimes it's egregious, but a lot of times it's just, you know. And sure. And there are definitely, I mean, there are definitely instances where I mean, I can, where SEO is the driving thing, right? I mean, where the outlets are writing headlines that they know will like get lots of clicks, be it on Twitter, be it on Google, whatever. And I can, and if, listen, if that's what happens, if your pieces is, you know, overbroadened or simplified or simplified or.

or whatever in a way that's just for the sole purpose of driving traffic, that's a legitimate complaint. There's also, you know, it's a much smaller incident, but we've also both seen stories where the editor assigns a piece, the writer writes something different, but the original headline lives on, right? The original concept of the editor had is so sort of how the piece gets pitched, and that can be a complete misrepresentation, too. But I agree with you, these conversations seem to sort of live on in the writer's head.

and I say that as a writer in whose head these conversations live on. They live on in our heads more than they do in reality, and Twitter is just sort of an extension of our heads. We've got a press box pronunciation note from listener Jordan. Good pod, Jordan wrote a couple of pods back, but didn't realize that stymied was pronounced like these stimmy checks were waiting for. I think I did that, because I think I say stimied rather than stymied.

I say stymied. I remember when you said stemmed, and I immediately corrected my own brain thinking, I must have it wrong. That's what David and I do. And we always assume the other one knows better than we know. There's nothing like the victory of there being a linguistic conversation and realizing that you were right. Like I was listening to one of, I was listening to one of, and I knew I was right. I knew I was right on this. But I was listening to one of Rob Harvilla's brilliant podcasts, the 60 songs that explained the 90s. And I forgot which, oh, I guess it was the one about nothing but a G thing with, you know, Dr. Drey and Snoop Dog, because he was talking about straight out of Compton and he called it a biopic. And I felt such vindication after hearing people say biopic for so on. And really, it's only in the era of podcasting. Because in real life, you could, like if you said biopic, I would say, do you mean biopic? And we would come to a mutual agreement, right? But in the era of, I always thought it was biopic. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the era of podcast and you hear someone who either is your real life friend or you just take to be your real life friend because you hear them talk twice a week. And they say biopic and you're just like, come on. Like, have I been wrong this whole time? And, you know, thankfully Rob Hartville cast the deciding vote in that one for me. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker is stymied by the strain pun headline. Monday's headline about a basketball team playing two big guys was too big or not to. big. Today's headline, David,

comes from Evan Bretzman. It's from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Kind of a nice winter headline about sled dog races. Sled dog race. Now, apparently some sled dog races have been canceled, but as the Star Tribune reports,

the North Shore's Bear Greece Marathon will start Sunday, albeit with some modification. Some sled dog race is canceled, but this sled dog race is happening. What was the Minneapolis a Star Tribune's Strain pun headline.

The, God. Is it like the snow must go on? The show must go. Oh, you are so close, but you need a sled dog. I know. I'm trying to think of what it is.

What's the one thing we know about sled dogs? Mush? There we go. Oh, this show Mush go on. The show Mush go on. Oh, my God. That's fantastic. It's like, what is the one word?

I was going to do a mush pun, and then I thought of the snow must go on. And I, yeah, the show Mush, go on. It's just amazing. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic Bike Erica Servantis. We are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.