The Press Box - How Big Ten Football Came Back. Plus, Obama White House Photographer Pete Souza.

Episode Date: September 17, 2020

College football is back ... sort of. Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the unusual return of college football, but more specifically the Big Ten (2:20). Then, Listener Mail, when they answer the question, “What’s your favorite word to try and jam into every one of your stories?” (24:20) Plus, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan White House photographer Pete Souza joins to discuss his journey in the White House and his new documentary, “The Way I See It.” (38:00) Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, Fox News host Harris Faulkner found herself in the position of apologizing to Newt Gingrich this week. What I want to know is, what, if anything, would you apologize to Newt Gingrich for? I'm sure during four years ago, I said that it signaled the end of his political career. I mean, I think everybody said that at some point. Were you wrong? Or maybe his political career, his public career. I was going to say, what does Newt Gingrich do? He appears on Fox occasionally and makes antisoros.

It's amazing how easy it is to bounce back into the spotlight on Fox News just by saying the most offensive right-wing Mimi thing possible. Yeah, New Geekridge strikes me as one of the people in American life I would least want to apologize to for anything. Yeah. Just on principle. Can you imagine someone wanting to apologize to someone less than you would want to apologize to New Guinea- Did you hear Harris Faulkner's apology? And she was just sort of like, oh, Newt, we love him. Everybody loves Newt.

Like, when did, it's not, when it's not about, like, apologizing or his role? Like, when did he become just, like, the lovable sitcom grandfather of the Republican Party? Like, what is, like, that's the weirdest way to paint impossible, right? I mean, he's, like, he is a career-long firebrand, searching for new and offensive things to say. Just because he looks like, you know, maybe like a 50 sitcom grandfather, it doesn't, doesn't make me any, he is one. David and I would like to formally apologize for suggesting that New Gingrich is beloved. It's time for the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here with a big show for you today.

We'll answer your listener mail, including the question, what's the favorite word you'd try to jam into every one of your stories? Plus, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan's White House photographer Pete Sousa stops by to talk about his career, and the new documentary, The Way I See It. All that plus, David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, Kaylee McAnney kicked off yesterday's White House briefing with the single biggest story in America.

Good afternoon, everyone. I just spoke with the president, and he wanted to thank the commissioner of Big Ten football, Kevin Warren, and all of the players, parents, coaches, and fans who wanted more than any. anything to play football. The president was happy to get this thing going. And now you will have players in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Nebraska, who will now have access to football, which is very good to see.

Now, I'm only notionally a sports writer, but I'm pretty sure there are no Big Ten schools in the state of Mississippi. Do we think she was reading the state abbreviations? I think you know exactly what she was doing, yeah. But why were the state abbreviations down on the page? That's what I want to know. Maybe you just saw the word Michigan and Red Miss and just said Mississippi. Who knows?

You think Kaylee McInney wanted to mail a letter today or something like that? I just don't quite understand how that happened. Maybe it was more of just a thank you film, the state, more of a shout-out thing. There's trying to get all the good states in there. The return of the Big Ten, David, is a. fascinating little media story. If you're not a sports person, don't worry, we'll walk you through it. But back in August, the Big Ten and Pack 12 conferences canceled their entire fall sports seasons,

most notably their college football seasons. The other three major college conferences just said, yeah, we're going to play anyway. The writer down in Alabama, John Talty, I'll put his piece up on our Twitter account, has called this whole saga college football's information war. That is absolutely the right term for it. So let's walk you through a few of the highlights about this information war and how we canceled Big Ten football and then as a society brought it back. Now, David, at the risk of Rachel Madowing up this segment too much, let's start way back in March,

American sports had just shut down, and Kirk Herb Street, ESPN's college football announcer, goes on the radio and says this. In my opinion, until we have a vaccine where we can really just, okay, now we've got some control over this, even if this curve is flattened out, this virus is still out there. I'll be shocked, I haven't talked with anybody.

I'll be shocked if we have NFL football this fall, if we have college football. Be so surprised if that happens. That statement, especially about college football, went off like a bomb. in sports world. And it did so because of Kirk Herb Street, commonly

known as Herbie, his status. I mean, how do we explain what he is to college football? It's way beyond being an announcer, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, he's sort of the sports most public fame. Their top cheerleader, I guess, would be one way to put it. But he's also, as we've seen here and in other

actually other recent instances, too, he's kind of the thought leader of the entire sport. that's the way I'd put it, yes. I mean, because he doesn't, he has such a position of influence. And again, if he were just, if he were entirely self-serious,

if he were just like, if he were a former coach sitting in that same seat, I don't think it would be exactly the same. There's something about just, he's, there's part of him that he has the, he's, he's part mind,

he's part fan, he's part, he's part every man. He's a little bit as like a certain, like an avatar nature to himself. And when he says something like that, he's setting the terms for conversation, really. That is the perfect way to put it because it's totally different than Tony Romo or Chris Collinsworth in the NFL. They're famous.

They're really good at breaking down plays, all that stuff. But you're right. Kirk Herb Street is a thought leader. So when he comes out and says this on ESPN radio, John Talti writes, college athletics leaders across the country were pissed. Pissed. the head coach of Notre Dame came out and said, Kirk does not know what he's talking about. For him to talk in those terms,

he's not a scientist. He's a college football analyst, right? And that to me was such an interesting moment in this whole thing, because as Talty knows, all of a sudden it becomes clear to college athletic directors and college coaches that the decision about whether or not to play college football this fall isn't going to be just about science. It's going to be about media narrative, right?

controlling the media narrative. How do we get out there and get our hands around this thing, right? So that we control it and we lead our conference to play college football instead of canceling. Okay. Fast forward to August. The big

10 comes out and cancels football for the fall. And then the conference's version of the information war begins. First thing, David, coaches come out. These are Big 10 coaches who've just seen their football canceled. Scott Frost, the coach of the university, Nebraska, excuse me, immediately announced his displeasure with the decision by saying the Huskers

were going to try to play football outside the conference. No Big Ten? Okay, we're just going to go play football in some other way this year. Ryan Day, the Ohio State University coach, publicly demanded to know why the conference wasn't playing. Penn State's James Franklin says, we've never really been told or understood why this season was shut down in the first place. And then there hasn't been a whole lot of communication since. Once again, it's probably worth stopping here and saying, right, that a college football coach is way, way more influential within his sport than almost any NFL coach. Oh, yeah.

Speaking of thought leaders, speaking of like public figures, uh, be way beyond, you know, merely coaching the team, right? Mm-hmm. When the head coach of Ohio State University comes out and says, nah, I don't want to do this, that's just huge in terms of this whole information war. Yeah. I mean, as much as I said a coach wouldn't have, you know, wouldn't have the same influence they wouldn't in Herbie's C, in Herbie's chair regionally in the space right around

a college football team and to the fans of that team, um, coaches are bigger than, you know, religious leaders, you know, I mean, coaches are certainly bigger than politicians. and I mean politicians are known for going out of their way to get football coach endorsements, you know, in states, places where like Big Ten and other big conferences operate. So, yeah, I mean, there's, when coaches are pushing back, that can be really significant. It's funny because we've seen some coaches in football and in other sports who are supreme, who I feel like have a more proper grasp on the situation and the potential dangers. but that doesn't always make a lot of noise.

It's just the, you know, let us play sort of contingent that can, that seems like it's, it really has the most mojo. Absolutely. I mean, try to, try to name any politician in Alabama versus Nick Saban, head coach of the University of Alabama. Like who's going to have more sway in that state? Not even close. Players, David, got it on the act.

Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields is one of the very best quarterbacks in all of college football, started a hashtag we want to play petition. Players parents got involved. There were parents protesting outside Big Ten headquarters. Does this start to resemble other protests around this country over the last couple of months? About the coronavirus. Yes, right. Jim Harbaugh, head coach of the University of Michigan, joined a protest at the big house

with Michigan parents saying free the Big Ten. Okay, right? Then there's this collection of media people. that get involved in this. All those guys who run college football message boards and are catering to a customer base that is very into playing football this fall, shall we say? These are the same fans on those message boards that are yelling at college football reporters saying, it's your fault they canceled the season, right?

You want the season to be canceled. The people who run those message boards, they get involved in this whole thing. And then you have Clay Travis of outkick the coverage. who has been leading the coronavirus isn't a big deal campaign in his various media arms. On September 1st, Michael Smith of Sports Business Journal reports that Travis actually facilitated a phone call between Donald Trump and Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren. I want you to listen to this paragraph from Smith's report. Joe Biden started running commercials in Big Ten markets that blame Trump's federal response to the pandemic is the main reason why the conference, that is the Big Ten, was not playing.

That prompted frustrated White House aides to start talking about how Trump could play a role in getting the Big Ten's teams back on the field to salvage the season and mute Biden's attack. Let us unpack that for a second. Okay. Joe Biden is running empty stadium ads, which were, by the way, very striking on TV. The White House gets man says, the only way we can stop this political attack is to get the Big Ten playing again, not fix the coronavirus. get the big den plague again. And then Clay Travis is inserted as this go-between between Donald Trump and the conference.

That is an amazing sequence of events. Yeah, I mean, from the very beginning, from Kaylee McEnany's statement, and Trump's just happy to get this thing going again, there is, I mean, and listen, and the entire White House response to the coronavirus, like use response loosely. There's a whole lot of, you could say they put the cart before the horse,

but this is like a heart and horse, like human centipede at this point. I mean, it's like there's still like there's no, like they're so eager to pretend this never happened that they'll just, that cutting off like a tenth degree result of their just totally inept coronavirus response is seen as like a solution to the problem that started six months ago. But yeah, I mean, it's absolutely wild. And of course, I mean, Clay Travis is a, interesting figure for many reasons, but he's obviously been very invested,

not just in the cause of getting football back on track, which, by the way, brief aside, we've talked about this before, but this nut so idea that, like, it's journalists' fault, you know, that the journalists don't want them to play football. Of all of the people that we've run through in your smart retelling of this situation,

the journalist, with the exception of maybe the people running their message boards, but probably not including them. The journalists are at the greatest risk of losing their livelihood over this not happening. Like players, there's still going to be a draft. There's still going to be a chance. They're still going to need players in the NFL.

You know, coaches, these big name coaches aren't, or they're fine. I mean, taking a year off might just save them a year of employment. You know, I mean, there's, that's, that's not, nothing to worry about. Obviously, you know, the politicians are going to do what they're going to do. But, you know, the journalists might just straight up get fired if there's no college football season. But anyway, that's part of, I'm sure, what's motivating Clay, Troubough? Travis. He's, you know, outkick is expanding right now and this is a big deal for him.

This is a big subject. But what he's more interested in than actual the playing of the games, it seems like, is pointing out all the other journalists who are, who are, he perceives to be trying to get the season canceled. He's more, he's part of this kind of broader conservative media movement that's more about pointing out sort of hypocrisy and pointing out bad intent, bad actors on the other side than actually talking about content. absolutely absolutely right our rogers sherman and a piece on the ringer points out that trump cares about just about every sport in america except college football he's never he's shown almost no interest in college football at least as measured on his twitter account but guess what

david there are big 10 schools in michigan wisconsin pennsylvania and minnesota states are going to be really important in november so here's trump at the white house yesterday talking about his interactions with Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren. I called the commissioner a couple of weeks ago, and we started really putting a lot of pressure on, frankly, because it was no reason for not to come back. And Kevin went in and worked very hard. I want to thank the players, the coaches, for working along,

and they wanted it very badly. The players and coaches in particular, the parents also. And Big Ten football just announced, as you know, that their schedule, they announced a schedule, and it's going to be great, important to have. I want to recommend that the PAC 12 also get going because there's no reason why PAC 12 shouldn't be playing now. Can we just talk about a little tick that Trump

and also Kaylee McAnney used? Trump would later say in this press conference, I want to congratulate Big Ten, which is kind of a, if you don't put the article in front of it, it's kind of a tell that you're probably not a huge college football fan. It's like I remember when I used to buy a box at Cheez-Its, and on the side it would say,

put cheese it in a bowl, cheese it for lunch. You know what I'd be like? Just eat cheese it. Where's the the? But they kept saying, you know, I want to congratulate Big Ten. Yeah. They play great football in Big Ten. We know it as the Big Ten.

That is the name of the conference. ABC News reports today, David, too, that Trump offered coronavirus tests to the Big Ten so they could start. ABC reports the quote, the Big Ten ultimately source the tests for, from a private company instead, the official said, because we don't have any excess of coronavirus tests floating around. Also, one Big Ten university president tells NBC news, President Trump had nothing to do with our decision and did not impact the deliberations. In fact, when his name came up, it was a negative because no one wanted this to be political.

All right. So the Big Ten makes this big announcement Wednesday. They're coming back. Eight regular season games starting the weekend of October 24th. title game in December. But there's still this big question of whether college football should be coming back at all. Yeah. Like nothing on the ground changed.

And this is why this thing is so both an information war and so Trumpian, right? You don't fix the underlying conditions. You just push a switch and hope that life goes back to normal. At least 12 power conference schools who are playing this fall have reported 1,000 cases on campus, 1,000 coronavirus cases. Texas Tech in our beloved Big 12, also known as the Big 12, has 75 players that have been infected with the coronavirus. LSU's Ed Orgeron said the other day that, quote, most of his team has the coronavirus

or had the coronavirus, right? I mean, and we could go over and over and over again with data points like this, but it's back. It's back. did the science change that much between August and now? Well, no. Did the conditions change all that much? Or was it the result of a successful public pressure campaign?

Well, I mean, listen, if you told me that the Big Ten voted to cancel postpone the season when they did as a P. Like, if there was an expose, a behind the scenes looked that said it was, they agreed it was a totally a PR move. opening themselves up to, you know, rejoining the season in October. If they knew that at the time, that wouldn't shock me, right? And certainly in the intervening period, I thought it did occur to me that they probably felt like they thought they were probably going to lead the charge. And they thought, and it was a bold move to do it, you know. But I'm sure in the intervening period when, you know, the SEC and everybody else were like

trying to, we're actually figuring out ways to play games. They felt like they had kind of, people involved probably felt like they had been conned, right? Because again, it's the act of playing and not just the, the scientific issue. And then there is, I mean, there is a, I guess, a practical, an issue of practical science, which is nonsensical, well, it doesn't really relate to reality. You said the numbers. I mean, the numbers of cases are sky high. And there is a, a huge issue that we didn't even discuss about potentially having career-ending or life-threatening conditions that result from the coronavirus, these people that are getting like heart conditions because of their exposure to the virus. And if players get that, then there's,

they're opening themselves up to lawsuits and everything else. That's, that was a huge concern, too. But I think there's this, I think people are looking around and they're like, other teams are playing, right? I mean, the other teams are playing and there's no need to have like the National Guard on the campus. And so why aren't we playing to? And that is a normal human way to react, I think. I don't agree with it. But I, but I, you asked if anything had changed, well, I mean, I guess seeing other teams successfully go out there and play, that, that has changed thing. Absolutely. And that, and that, and it definitely was weird, right? It was weird to watch a University of Texas game last week. And have whole conferences just not playing. So now that

The Big Ten is playing. It looks like the PAC 12 may follow suit. Heather Dinnich, VSPN, who's been reporting a ton about all this stuff, tweeted yesterday a source with knowledge of the discussions told me with clearance at the local level in California and Oregon. It's possible the PAC 12 can return as soon as late October. USC players have sent an open letter to Gavin Newsom asking to play, as if Gavin Newsom did not have more important things to deal with at this very moment. And let me leave you, David, with a comedy element in all this.

On Tuesday, University of Nebraska President Ted Carter was at a podium getting ready to speak in an event. And a hot mic, this whole thing would not be complete without the mandatory hot mic, captured him saying this. Listen closely. Everything that's going on here. We're getting ready to announce for the Big Ten football tonight. Oh, really? I heard that that was happening. I didn't, I think there's a lot of anticipation about that.

Good for you. maybe that'll get off your plate. Well, it never will, but it's a good move in the right direction. If you couldn't hear what Ted Carter was saying, he said, we're getting ready to announce the Huskers and Big Ten football tonight. This is Tuesday, a full day before it actually happened.

And Yusuf Nasser, who's a local reporter there in Nebraska, then had the video of Ted Carter. He says that at the microphone through a muffled coronavirus mask. And then he goes and sits next to the podium while someone else is speaking. And Nasser had the video of him scrolling through his phone,

obviously seeing this coming up on Twitter and seeing the reaction that, oh my gosh, the president at the unit, one of the big 10 schools has announced that football's coming back tonight. And Carter's saying, oh crap, I just added something else to this information war. 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. Some sad news from New York City, David. This year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade has been canceled.

Man. Yeah, I know. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Apparently someone found the Thanksgiving parades. Thanks to John Fogde. Wow, that's a great tweet. People have done a few rounds on that, but it never really stops being funny. There's a video, David, from Florida, of anti-maskers invading a

Target store. Have you seen this? The anti-maskers run in and they're like dancing in the aisle. I was like, we're not wearing masks. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write herd mentality. Of course, Donald Trump was trying to say herd immunity and then he said this. And you'll develop, you'll develop herd like a herd mentality. It's going to be herd developed and that's going to happen.

Thanks to Eben M. Anderson for that one. And finally, David, a very important tweet from Red Lobster. That's right. your go-to restaurant for endless shrimp and the underrated cheese biscuits has a new product, the do garita. Oh, yeah. It is a margarita made with Mountain Dew. And this is definitely on my radar.

Plenty of good responses to that tweet. Someone needs to haul red lobster in front of the hague. Does Red Lobster have college freshmen creating new menu items? This is 2020 in a glass and I won in. And finally, I did not expect the COVID-19 vaccine to take this form, but here we are. If you made fun of something, David and I would have been genuinely interested in drinking 10 years ago. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

Time for the notebook dump, David, and let's do some listener mail. We do this every Thursday. That's just too good. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were going to go in the 10 years ago we'd like to do. That is the do reta is really like. The Dugarita. The Dugarita.

Just a quick correction. Yeah. The Dugarita is absolutely like, I don't even know. Like if the white Russian never existed and somebody invented the white Russian at like TGI Fridays 10 years ago, we would have spent a lot of time at TGI. Some people were reading Jonathan Franzen novels 10 years ago. David now going to the ESPN zone. Yeah. That was our idea of culture.

Listener mail, David, two weeks ago, a listener named Gabe Hernandez came forward and said, I have completed the press box trifecta. I got an overworked Twitter joke on the show. I got listener mail on the show. And I got a strain pun headline on the show. What do we call this thing? What do we call the press box trifect? Well, I did some polls on our Twitter account this week.

Great. In the first poll, I put the Gabe. We're going to name it after him like you name a sandwich after somebody at a restaurant. I put the Gabe up against another listener's suggestion, the Oxford comma. So the Gabe versus the Oxford comma. but readers on Twitter were like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not right. The better term was hitting for the news cycle.

Okay, so I did another poll. The Oxford comma versus hitting for the news cycle. Well, the winner, after nearly 1,500 votes. Wow. And by a margin of two to one is the Oxford comma. All right. The Oxford comma. So if you get one in all those things, you have completed the Oxford comma.

You have gotten an Oxford comma, something like. We're working on it. Also, I got an update in the old guys still got it department. If you're new to this show, David and I love the journalistic bit where a movie director or a novelist or a musician who's getting up there in age makes a final great piece of art. And every journalist goes, the old guy still got it. It doesn't have to be a final. It's like any piece of art great or not after the age of like 65. A penultimate piece of art.

And then they make the real shitty movie at the end and everyone just pretends it. didn't exist. That also happens. Nominees for this week, David. Bob Woodward, the old guys still got it. Oh, yeah. Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers also came up. And Lions running back Adrian Peterson. Congrats to all the old guys who have still got it out there.

This question from Brett Anthony Collette. Is, was there a word you'd try to shoehorn into your pieces or you noticed a writer you were editing would lean on overly? I know when I was a writer, I'd try and use Maelstrom at every opportunity to show how clever I thought I was. Is there a word, David? You tried to squeeze into every piece of writing. I know there are words. There absolutely are. The thing that springs of mind isn't words and it's a, like, turns a phrase. I mean, I can't think I probably every piece I've ever written, I've tried to put in, you know, less a blank and more a blank or like some play on the ears. resistible force meeting the immovable object.

It's something like, you know, like make that cute or some like, you know, wash, rinse, repeat, you know, just like something. There are, yes, there are, there are many like turns of phrase that I would use over and over again and had to kind of check myself on if my editor and my editor would do it for me if I didn't. I'm sure there's words. I don't know. God, what are they? What about you?

The one I, that came to mind is really weird and really minor. But whenever I would do a piece, I would always have someone. morphed into something else. Adrian Wojnarowski morphed from general columnist to NBA insider. Yeah. I'd never transform, never change,

never switch, never like molt or anything like that, but he would morph. Yeah. I catch myself doing that all the time and I'm like, where the hell did that come from? That's not even good. It's just it just keeps coming up though.

We'll keep thinking on this. This is from Matthew, given absolute booking power who is the press box's White Whale interview. Dang. Anybody from the world of journalism? When I was thinking of this, I was like,

the problem is that journalists are just very available. Yeah, I'm trying, like, our purview is narrow enough that like, I don't know,

are there any, like, grand doms or grand old men of public, of journalism that like, I mean, we could do dead or alive, you could think of some,

but I don't know, I'm trying to think of who, like, living journalists. There's some old guys still got it that we haven't interviewed. Somebody was asking me this one time to say, who is a sports media person? You always wanted to interview, but you really can't get. I'm like, I don't know if you understand that these people, there's not like a J.D. Salinger,

not a Thomas pension of sports media. They're pretty getable, right? They're out there. These are pretty attainable public figures. This is from Elizabeth Gardner. Do you borrow books from the library, print or e-books? I returned a print book, and now it's in quarantine for up to 10 days before. will show up as returned. David, do you use the library system of America at this point?

I got to tell you, there have been numerous times in the past couple years when I've almost signed up online just so I can have access to like free e-books and whatever. And there's always some hitch in me doing it, either a timing thing or like a logging in thing or whatever and I still haven't done it. But no, I don't. I don't do it. I need to do it. I just moved. And I'm in a city with an incredible, an incredible library system. But more importantly, the library closest to me, the big downtown library has a used bookshop component to it where they sell the books that they're pulling out of circulation. So I will definitely be joining that library as soon as as it reopens to the public. The $1 library bookstore within the library is amazing and extremely

dangerous. I would say this for libraries. I wind up checking out a lot of books or at least my wife does for the kids. Because at the point you and I are in life, we buy books and then we don't read them. Yeah. Kids actually read books. Yes. So they just need lots and lots of books like oh i want the new dog man i want the bear the one berenstein bears we don't own so there's a lot of kids checking out yeah still very helpful yeah and the checking out also helps the man i don't i don't want to display i don't want to give away too much but on those series books when you just have no idea if your kid has read it or and your kid might not even have an idea if he or she has read it you know you can there's there's a lot it's it's a lot easier

just to check it out and then return it two days later if it if it happens to be a duplicate Eric Horn as a fellow Texas ex. How many times did you shudder during the crowd shots while watching college football last weekend? The number of unmasked fans that made the broadcast was staggering should the networks choose to only cut to fans following the rules.

I did think about this when I was watching football. There were only a few pro fans in the stands last week, but that showing the fans, which used to be just like the biggest layup for a TV production, is now politically freighted.

Yeah. Because you're showing these people and they're screaming or they're sitting a little too close together. And it's just a little uncomfortable, right? And it's almost a statement. Yeah. Because it's in a particular state, right? A statement, literally.

It's in a particular state or particular, you know, municipality that is allowing fans. Yeah, it's really tough. I mean, it also reflects negatively or positively given, I mean, depending on your point of view, I guess, on events where things are being dealt with responsibly. You know, I mean, when there's gatherings that are, like, outdoors with 10 feet between every person or between every, like, family or whatever, it's like, no, now, what is, no, how do you treat those? I don't know. I mean, I think that it does seem like the right move would be to not show, not to not show unmasked or otherwise, you know, misbehaving, you know, members of the, of the crowd.

but I don't know how practically possible that is. It does seem like for all, for all, I mean, that I wish so much that teams and schools and everybody else were taking this more seriously than they are. But, I mean, there is sort of, I mean, as far as like the production process goes, it's kind of hard to fault that TV companies,

I mean, the TV companies for airing a product that's as close to what people are used to. And we've many times have we had conversations about, about the goal being to make it to make it feel seamless, to make it feel like it always was. The fact that all those people are in the crowd there, despite, I mean, that's not the TV, it's not ESPN's fault.

Oh, I know. And their task was just showing what, you know, what they're used to showing. But it does, it's funny. I know what Eric's saying, because it does feel like it normalizes it,

right? Like, oh, people are going to football games. That's okay again? And you're like, well, maybe not okay. I'm not sure how many people are left to be influenced, but maybe there are. a lot of people. This is from Leor Huve Fink, either in November

hopefully or in four years, oh dear God no, which Republican will be the first to publish a vindictive book, I know I went with Trump all the way, but here's the case for why I'm okay. Or do they politically pick up where he left off? We talked about this with Pence,

I think on the air, that it sort of occurred to me very recently. I thought Pence would be sort of, it would be kind of functionally, well, let's take a step You know, Pence as much as any vice president in recent memory seems to be positioning himself for a future White House run. And I kind of, without thinking about it, had just assumed that he disqualified himself just by being with Trump. Not that even, even if the Trump backlash isn't

that great, just that it's very specific, you know, and it was, you know, and we're looking for something new almost every cycle. But it did kind of occur to me recently that, like, the fact that so many Republicans, all the Republicans have lined up behind Trump for various reasons, is that nothing means anything anyway. I don't know that you'll really have to say I'm not a Trump Republican. I think you'll just say, I'm for things that Trump was clearly not for, but pretend, but in the same breath, pretend that's what the Republicans have been for all along. I don't know. I feel like it's maybe overly negative or suspicious, but I honestly think that there won't be, there are definitely people that write.

anti-Trump books on the Republican side, but I think the overwhelming, I think Mitch McConnell is just going to be like business as usual. They will, they will memory whole all the Trump stuff that becomes inconvenient. And somebody like Pence will take the Trump base and try to marry it to the old Republican base, right, and cast himself as a bridge. I can speak to these people, and I can also speak to David Frum, right? That will absolutely be his. By the way, by the way, memory hole is a great submission for words you try to get into ever. repeat. It's not you specifically, but just you see that a lot. Also, retcon. Retcon and like non, in like, you know, slightly different purviews is great. Isn't it always funny? You're like,

I will never use that common word or cliche in a piece, but you will absolutely use it in a podcast in like five seconds. Yep. If you're like, I'm just desperate. I have to say something. This is from the laundry. Could you guys talk about this take on newspaper endorsements from Dave Wasserman? So Dave Wasserman is at Redistrict, one of the big follows this time of year. He says, Hot take, perhaps one of the worst things, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and major outlets could do to Biden before November 3rd is to endorse him. Taking sides, delegitimizes these outlets, hard news in the eyes of a lot of voters, and helps Trump's case, helps Trump's case that their stories are biased or fake. I don't disagree. I just think newspaper endorsements are just useless in general.

I just, I mean, that's the thing, right? It's like if you think, I don't know if it, I don't know if you could de-legitimize the New York Times in anybody's eyes at this point, right? It's kind of like coronavirus information. You know, anybody who doesn't trust the New York Times going to start trusting them because they do endorsements or vice versa. But they're just useless. And they're just so there was a thing the other day, you know, Sarah Palin is suing the

New York Times. And I was reading, there was a great story in Columbia Journalism Review kind of going over the minutes of that. I'm just like, this was all for an editor. that at the end of the day just wasn't very important. It just wasn't. It just, it was so, it just something had to be written. And now they're being sued because something was written. And I'm just like, why are we going through all this?

You know, it just feels very, very past its prime at this point, if it ever had a prime. This is from Godis Nixon, David. To complete the ringer circle, can you compare David's shoemaker's pun-guessing ability to a fast food item? I thought about this. I think David's ability to guess puns is a solid filet of fish, which is to say not quite the Big Mac level, you know, not quite the champagne of pun guessing,

but it's solid, right? It never disappoints. You know what you're going to get. The filet of fish is a supremely underrated sandwich. I mean, it's easy to scoff at, but a filet of fish is...

No, I mean, I mean, this is a compliment. No, I know you do. I'm just saying, this to everybody is out there listening. We lived in D.C. now, a lifetime ago, but I was very broke and lived directly across the street from McDonald's,

where you could get, for $2.22 you could get two filet of fish or two double cheeseburgers or I discovered one of each, which is basically the surf and turf of the McDonald's world, and I ate a lot of those. Yeah, if I wanted to insult you, I'd call you the McFlurry of

guesses. because that's just the bargain basement, uh, blizzard from DQ. Everybody knows that. All right, David, a fun convo with a talented guy. Here's the man who took your favorite pictures of Barack Obama, Pete Sousa. Pete Sousa has had too many interesting careers for one podcast. He was a news photographer for two papers in Chicago, an official White House photographer for Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, a resistance hero and now the subject of a fascinating

new documentary, the way I see it, which is in Select Theaters Friday, and premieres. on MSNBC on October 9th. Pete, thanks for coming on the press box. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. We are a media podcast, so I wanted to start with your career in newspapers, which we just glimpse in this movie. What kind of news photographer did you set out to be? Really, a general assignment, news photographer. I mean, I started out working for two small papers in Kansas. And I remember somebody said to me, you know, if a dog crosses the street between 10 and 12 in the morning,

there's a possibility that ends up on page one, because there's not a lot going on in some small towns in Kansas. But, you know, no, I cover a lot of just general assignment, sports assignments, breaking news, feature assignments, business, you name it. You had the distinction of working for both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. And we know those are two different kinds of people, or were two different kinds of people at work. So were you more a Sun-Times guy or are you more of a Tribune guy in a manner?

Probably more of a Sun-Times guy, to be honest with you. When I, well, so when I worked for the Sun-Times and then the 80s, you know, we were the underdog, if you will. I mean, we're literally across the street from each other, the two buildings. And the Tribune, I think we had like maybe 22, 23 photographers, and the Tribune had like 45 or something like that. Wow. And so we, you know, we, we were trying to compete against them and we didn't have as big a budget.

And yeah, so that was sort of my, I kind of like that. When I went to the work for the Tribune, this would have been many years later, I went to work for the Tribune. I was actually based in D.C. And so that competitive nature just didn't really exist because, you know, the Sun-Times didn't have a photographer in D.C. sure now were you a kind of guy who was in the billy goat tavern there with mike royko and roger ebert after hours uh yeah i wasn't the billy goat tavern a lot for sure that was kind of the hangout place i didn't really hang out with with ebert uh did hang out with royko a couple times that's great so there's a scene in the way i see it when you're working in the reagan white house which is your first white house

assignment and Reagan is actually coming up with ideas for posed photographs. He'd been an actor who'd been in 150 publicity photographs. Was that something he did often? Fortunately not. It was kind of a rare occurrence, but every once in a while, the White House would want to release a photograph, especially when he was at the ranch, because he'd go there for like three or four weeks every summer, and the press would never see him. And so, you know, there were always, is there anything wrong with them? You know, I remember one year there was a, there was a rumor that he had a heart attack. And so oftentimes, you know, I would be dispatched to make a picture to show that now he's doing okay.

You know, he's still, he's still. And so that scene, which I actually had never seen that video and it had completely forgotten that interaction we had. But it is pretty funny in retrospect, seeing the awkwardness of me trying to suggest to him, hey, maybe we should do this or that. And he had his own ideas on how to go about and doing it. Yeah, this would be a vigorous looking photo, me scooping some dirt here with the tree here. What was different about the way Ronald Reagan regarded the White House photographer as opposed to the way Barack Obama regarded you?

You know, I think part of it was I didn't know Reagan coming in. I wasn't his chief photographer. I was hired by his chief photographer who just stayed one term. And so, you know, I think there was a, for me, it was a constant fight for access, not with Reagan directly, but just with the staff surrounding him

to get access to these behind the scenes moment. He was much more guarded by his staff than Reagan was towards the White House photographer. And, but I, but I, still think I had made some successful, you know, authentic behind the scenes moments that really help show what what Reagan was truly like as a, not just as a president, but as just as a human being. And you said he was, he was almost better in the photographs that you just happened to capture. Yeah, yeah. Rather than the posed photographs. Yeah, I mean, you have to go back to

the 80s. And it was, it was such that if there was a, there was a lot. of emphasis by the staff on if he was making a speech or whatever, creating the best possible backdrop because they felt that was the imagery for the three network televisions, which that's all there was at the time, was the most important part of getting his image out there. And then for time in Newsweek, it would be, you know, if they were going to be doing a, you know, a big story, a cover story on Reagan one week, the photographer, whoever the photographer was assigned by the magazine would get like an amount of time, like 15 minutes. Okay, you have 15 minutes to make a picture. And it was all sort of created, you know, and then lights would be brought in.

And it was all, it was all somewhat stagecrafted by the, you know, by the photographer to, to, to create this image. Whereas, you know, even then, my job was just trying to get these fleeting moments, not staging things, although as the film shows, every once in a while, I had to. 2004, Barack Obama gets elected to the U.S. Senate. Jeff Zellini, then with the Tribune, now with CNN, proposes a series about Obama's first year in office, and you take the pictures for that series. What struck you about Obama as a subject in that first extended encounter? I mean, I met him his first day in the Senate, which was kind of a ceremonial day, right? The family who stayed in Chicago throughout his Senate term came to D.C. for, you know, his swearing in ceremony.

And the thing that surprised me that first week was how, because I got access that nobody else got in terms of behind the scenes because I was like the local newspaper. that the presence of my camera in these behind the scenes moments didn't like change at all the way he went about his business, which is pretty unusual in a politician, especially, you know, a new national politician. And I think, you know, he was just comfortable in his own skin. And it just didn't bother him that I was, you know, tagging along with him. You declared when you joined the White House,

the Obama White House that you wanted to produce, quote, the best photographic archive of a president that's ever been done. How do you set about at that early stage doing something like that? Well, I mean, it's all about access. It's it's about access and trust. You know, I had the the green light from President Obama to have that access. But, you know, also put yourself in his shoes, right? He's he's a human being like you or me. If suddenly you've got this guy that's falling you around every day snapping pictures, you know, there's an adjustment period. And I, you know, I was cognizant of that.

So, you know, and so those first few months, it was, you know, just this process of like making sure you understood the importance of me being there and telling him that, you know, these images are for history and, you know, people. aren't necessarily going to see these right away, but it'll be just an important, you know, archive for history. He got it. You say in the movie that you had to use your intuition about when to give the president some space. What were his tells? What would what could you see on his face or see in his behavior that you needed to back off for a few minutes? There were two times where, you know, it came into play. And it was usually, if he was having a, you know, a one-on-one meeting with

someone. And it was a, you know, a semi-personal slash private conversation. I mean, I'd make my pictures. But if it was a half-hour meeting, I wouldn't say a half-hour. So, you know, I just, it's just, that's just common sense, right? Give the guy some space. The other time would be when he was with his family. So, like, there's a picture. I can't remember if it's in the film. I know it's in my book where he's on, he's on, Malia had just gotten home from school, and he saw her out on the swing set, which you can see from the Oval Office. And I walked out there, he walked out, and I walked out with him, and I made a couple pictures. He was sitting in one swing, and Malia was sitting in another swing. And they were having a father-daughter conversation. So I made,

my pictures, but then I, you know, I backed away because, you know, they let them have their private father-daughter conversation. They don't need to have the photographer listen in. every moment of what they're talking about. Since the ringer is obsessed with basketball, I got to ask you about this one, Obama is playing basketball against his aide, Reggie Love, who actually played at Duke. What was shooting that game like for you?

Well, I mean, look, sports photography is not easy, right? It's a skill. You've got to really be on your game. And there was a time when I worked for the Chicago Sun-Times and newspapers and Kansas. where I was, you know, I'd say I was a pretty good sports photographer because I was doing it on a regular basis. And so we go into this dark gym, you know, and, you know, so the lighting's terrible and, you know, and I'm rusty as a sports photographer and I'm trying to get this picture and, you know, and they play and he blocks Reggie's shot at one point. And thankfully, you know, I got that picture. And it's like, you know, right at the, right at the picture.

the end of the game. They played for about an hour. And I sort of never forget, like, at the end of the game, President Obama starts walking towards me. He's got sweat dripping down his face, his t-shirts all sweaty. And he like just comes up to me. He's like, hey, did you get that block? I wanted to make sure that I had gotten that picture because he was so proud of blocking, uh, blocking Reggie. Yeah, I need to make sure you got my highlight somewhere in this, uh, in this real. here's a dumb question. If you took a picture of the president and the president just hated it, wasn't an invasive picture or an immoral picture, he just didn't like it. Is that preserved or does that go into the trash? Yeah, no, every single picture I took is now at the National Archives, all 1.9 million.

Wow. So everything. It's not, there's no, there's no such thing as we discarded this one and it didn't work. It's, they're all there. Sadly, yes, because you'll be able to see, you know, all the mistakes I made someday. 2011, you took the situation room shot of Obama and other officials after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces. And you point this out in the movie that there is a somewhat similar shot of Donald Trump after Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi was killed. Can you just explain to us what the difference between those two shots were from your eye? Well, I mean, the bin Laden raid, I was in the room when it happened,

not just where it happened, but when it happened. So while they were monitoring the raid, the Trump photo, who knows when that was taken? It looks like it was taken before the raid, but it doesn't appear that it was during the raid. Yeah, it looks more,

and it looks, I think you pointed out in the movie that looks like Donald Trump was actually looking at the camera. Yeah, it kind of looks posed to me. I mean, that was my sentence when I first saw it.

Was there a momentous day of the Obama presidency where you came out and said, damn, I didn't get the shot that I wanted today? I probably had a lot of things like that. You know, because like some days not a lot happens. And, you know, you don't know that I like, you know, miss anything per se. But not every day yields great pictures, which I, you know, I think people don't realize. I mean, you know, sometimes it's the same people sitting around the same chairs, sitting in the exact same place they were the day before.

Maybe they're talking about something different, but, you know, the composition is exactly the same. But it doesn't, you know, to me, that's part of the job, which is if you're documenting for history, you still have to photograph these meetings. You've got to show who's in the room. I'm going to try to show emotion if it exists. What's the mood?

You know, just the interactions. Doesn't always yield a great photograph. 2012, there's the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, which is one of the most horrible days of the Obama presidency. He gives that emotional speech. And you took that picture of him hugging Malia that night. How did you get, you know, again, talking about that difference between, you know, public settings or, you know, non-family settings and family settings? How did you get that close to take that picture? Yeah, I mean, so that that was, was it December 12th or 14th?

So it was right in the midst of the Christmas season at the White House, which is, you know, there's like a party on the state floor every night, you know, with like 500 people. And late that afternoon, he was supposed to attend this party and trying to decide whether he should still make an appearance. And he thought, you know, look, I invited all these people. I at least have to say hi to him. And what he'd usually do is go up to the residence to, quote, pick up Michelle, and then they would walk down the grand staircase. And so I'd usually ride up in the elevator with him. And that's what happened that night.

And we got off the elevator, and Malia had just gotten home for school. And she was standing in the middle of the hallway. And he just, like, wrapped his arms around her. and he just like wouldn't let her go. Because I'm sure there were thousands of parents doing the exact same thing with their children that night. And in that moment, he was a dad. He wasn't the president. He was a dad.

One more for you. You suppressed your political opinions when you were working at the White House. They are no longer suppressed. I think it's fair to say. Was there a particular event that led you to? down that path? I mean, it's, it's clear in the movie, it's broadly Donald Trump and the way Donald Trump has conducted himself as president. But was there, was there one inciting incident where you said, I've had enough? Well, I mean, you got to remember this is a guy that that started

his presidential campaign with the birther issue, you know, claiming that Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. And so, you know, it's hard to let go of that. But really, it started on a first day where, you know, he sends his press secretary out to the White House press briefing room to purposely lie about crowd size of all things. And, you know, Sean Spicer knew he was lying. And, you know, that, and then later that day, Trump goes to the CIA headquarters and in front of the memorial wall that pays tribute to the CIA agents

that lost their life in representing their country lies again about crowd size and makes it a political rally at CIA headquarters. And so those, I'd say those couple things. set me off right away. The movie is The Way I See It, which is out Friday. In Select Theater, you can also see it on MSNBC October 9th. You can see Pete Sousa's photography on Instagram and by his books, including Shade.

Thank you so much for being on the press box, Pete. Thanks for having me. And sorry, if you can hear the train out the window that comes by like twice a day. No, that's reality. That's reality. We're getting here as a photographer, right? That's reality. Thanks, Pete.

You bet. Thanks. All right, it's time for David Schumacher guesses. The Strain PUN headline. Are you ready? David's son has joined us for David Shoemaker, guests to the Strain Pund headline. Monday's headline about using Excel to organize your sex life.

You might need to put the hands over the kids' ears here, was between the spreadsheets. We also had the nominee Waiting to Excel, which I really liked. Today's headline comes from Eric. It's from the Brooklyn paper. I haven't had that on the show. Wow. The story is that Bill de Blasio's,

$2.7 billion plan to build a street car connecting Brooklyn and Queens will not happen under de Blasio's watch. The paper reports the streetcar's fate will be decided by the next mayoral administration. Okay. I think I've given you enough. I think I have everything I need. What was the Brooklyn paper's strain pun headline? Well, okay, if this were about de Blasio just wanting to build the street car, it would be a street car named Desire, right? Yes, that would be the first story.

But now... This is a streetcar named... Uh... Mm. Um, retire. Mm, close. Uh, dang, a streetcar named... What is about, like, the next administration?

Time has run out. Uh, expired. A street car named expired? A street car named expired? There we go. There we go. That's nice. Good stuff from the Brooklyn paper. Yeah. I had no idea. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeda.

Production Badgick by Erica Servantes. We're back Monday with a guest. I'm still trying to book at this moment. More lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.