The Press Box - How to Watch the NFL Draft, RIP CNN+, and Who’s Afraid of ‘Winning Time’?

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Bryan and David discuss the three-day-long NFL draft, starting with what we saw at the combine, the increase in media coverage, and they weigh in on prospect Kayvon Thibodeaux and the recruiting proce...ss (13:31). Later, they break down the news that Elon Musk will be buying Twitter for $44 billion, examine Jerry West’s case against the HBO producers of ‘Winning Time,’ and wrap things up with a farewell to CNN+ (35:58). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Listen now. David, I went on a little adventure here in Los Angeles yesterday. No, do tell. I went to former Jeopardy host Alex Trebeck's estate sale. Did you tell Claire McNair you were going beforehand or would have been awkward if you would just run into her there? I kind of thought I would. I thought I'd see her somewhere in the circular drive taking notes as people filed into the the house to buy Alex's stuff.
Starting point is 00:01:05 That's incredible. Did you go, why did you, why were you there? What was your purplory, was this a journalistic endeavor or was this just a, like a fun thing to do on a Sunday? After 30 years, do you need to ask me, why did I go to Alex Trebex estate sale? Come on, man. Our aesthetic 80s and 90s game show host. Listen, I understand why, I understand why one would go there. I also understand that, you know, the beauty of our jobs is that we get paid to do stuff that we might have done anyway.
Starting point is 00:01:37 Very true. I'll tell you the specific reason here is because I was looking online. I saw there's some news reports about it. A state sale at Alex Trebeck's house. I get online and there are some pictures of the things on sale. And my eyes immediately went to Alex Trebeck's bookcases that were loaded with books. And that was the bat signal I needed. So wait, are you thinking, I understand, I would probably be there too, if given the opportunity.
Starting point is 00:02:11 But is your thought process, like, there's a lot of books that I could buy for probably cheap because who's going to be there to buy books? Or is it specifically, I want a book that Alex Trebek has laid his hands slash his eyes on? So I think that's the question with everything in the house. Right. There's do I want this or do I want this because it belonged to Alex Trebek, beloved celebrity. And as I was walking into the house, I was like, do not buy anything from category number two. Don't buy anything just because it was Alex Trebeck. Yes.
Starting point is 00:02:49 Right. Because that's the way you just come out with a bunch of stuff and then I get home and I'm like, why did I get all this stuff? Right. That's the stuff that ends up hidden behind some. something or lost or thrown away within a year anyway. Yeah. And it's like, aha, look at this. Amazing.
Starting point is 00:03:04 This curio that I've come home with and now there's no place for it. Right. So Alex Trebek until he died a year and a half ago from pancreatic cancer, lived in a big three-story house in Studio City up in the San Fernando Valley. This was a four-day sale, David. I got there on day four at nine o'clock when the house opened. And there was a huge line snaking from the gates. of this giant house
Starting point is 00:03:30 down a busy road and into a park next door. Now, because it's next to a busy road, lots of cars are slowing down and asking us in line, what are you lining up for? What are you doing in this residential neighborhood to which we said,
Starting point is 00:03:47 we're waiting to get into Alex Trebex's estate sale. And you should have seen the faces on those drivers when we said that. So how many people I mean, it's just like a hundred people? Like several hundred people? A hundred or more in front of me in line and easily that many behind me.
Starting point is 00:04:08 By the time I got to the gates of the house, which by the way took two hours. You didn't get in for two hours? Because they're only letting so many people in at a time. Were you there solo or were they members of the family? I was there solo. Thank God. Could you imagine just like a surprise two-hour line
Starting point is 00:04:27 with children in tow? that you probably wouldn't have made it. It's like waiting in line for barbecue. Not something for kids. But you know the barbecue line's going to be two hours long. And there's food at the end of it. Yeah. Kids happy.
Starting point is 00:04:40 Day four of the Alex Rebecca State. Just imagine explaining to your children the significance of this. You would have had to buy stuff from category two to justify the time spent in line. Yeah. I'm not sure my nine old could even process this. Your daughter is Snow Globe from Alex Trebek's study just to like and pretended that he was like a former president. Yeah. And then explain.
Starting point is 00:05:04 Yeah. I tried to explain what Jeopardy was to her. Yeah. So we're standing in this line in the hot sun and people start coming out of the house with stuff. A couple comes out with matching lamps. Another woman comes out with an ashtray. A third person comes out with a sander because the garage was also open and everything was for sale. In fact, right before we got through the.
Starting point is 00:05:27 Gates, one of the people coordinating the wholesale said, you can have any of the light fixtures in here. It's just your responsibility to detach it from the ceiling. That's how much everything was being sold in this house. Well, as someone who's changed light fixtures in the past couple years, more than I ever thought I would, were they willing to turn the electricity off? Were they, Were they going to switch off the breakers so that you could take down in the fixture? Or was that they not considered that part? I think maybe you bought it and then you came back later in the day. I did not get to the light fixture part.
Starting point is 00:06:09 All right, fair enough. I got to tell you, when I got to the house, I was in pure thrill of the hunt mode. Like when you and I are going into a junk store or a retro store or a used bookstore. Yeah. Soon as I walked through the gates, I felt like a complete creep. It felt really weird. And I took this, I went up to the second floor and I, of course, didn't know where I was going because I don't know, I don't know the way through Alex Trebek's house.
Starting point is 00:06:37 I take this left turn and I wind up in the bedroom. Oh, yeah. And in the closet where there are all these clothes like robes and stuff hanging in the closet. And I'm like this, this just feels really, really weird. Was there price tag? Is it like, are things individually priced or is it like a yard sale where someone's waiting out front to come up with prices as you pass by? They were individually priced, but a lot of deals were being made because it was the last
Starting point is 00:07:03 day of the sale. So every robe has a tag on it? Every robe has a tag. What were the robes going for? $250 in one case? Oh. Yeah. I guess they were really fancy.
Starting point is 00:07:15 The finest silks or just because it was Alex's favorite? It seemed, it seemed fancy. but again, I was out of there. I did not want to contemplate wearing somebody else's clothes. That's really, really gross to me. And it does get this whole idea of you and I love to accumulate stuff. We love stuff, but you have all this stuff that is very particular to you. And when you're gone, if you and I get hit by an an avowal tomorrow, that stuff, however lovingly collected over a period of decades will just be stuff.
Starting point is 00:07:49 and it's totally out of context. And some of it might mean something to somebody else, but most of it will mean something only to you and me, very particularly. Especially on day four, when all the connective tissue has already been trotted out the door. Correct. Correct. I made my way to Alex Trebek's library,
Starting point is 00:08:11 which is up on the third floor. It's the kind of library you and I would have loved to have built if we were a world famous game show host in the 80s and 90s and 2000s. It had beautiful books, giant fireplace, a full bar, like a real bar that you could get behind and make drinks. By the way, all the liquor was for sale in this house. Another very strange feature of the estate sale. It had a screening room with a really thick, plush, red carpet to watch movies
Starting point is 00:08:42 and perhaps old episodes of Jeopardy. Found some books there. Then I went to Alex Trebek's office. which was down on the first floor. There were lots more books there. And by the way, you think of Alex Trebek, right? Really smart guy. The whole sort of point of jeopardy is here is this very well-rounded person knows a little about a lot of things.
Starting point is 00:09:04 So you wouldn't be surprised to know that there was a lot of history. Right. On these shelves, a lot of books about Canada, Alex Trebek proud Canadian. Is this more like popular history or like scholarly history? So I would say more like. Like books about Watergate, books about the Bush administration, not a lot of generalist nonfiction like the tipping point. Sure.
Starting point is 00:09:29 I was sort of heartbroken to see all the Bill O'Reilly killing books in his office. They were unsold. Those books paid my rent for a long time. A lot of the books had the 25% off Barnes & Noble stickers on them. Like he got out of the bin or the two for one thing. That was kind of a strange thing. It's a man after my own heart. There's no, it's like the joy of like a, we've talked about this before.
Starting point is 00:09:57 Any used bookstore is wonderful, but a small used bookstore. The feeling that you get well curated is obviously a plus, but the feeling of being able to look at every spine before you leave is just, you just feel like such a victory. There's a little bit of that and going to like the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble. I cannot read through all the novels, all the books in the. The history section, anything else. But I can look at every book in the bargain bin and make some choices based on that. And you can always find something. And speaking of bargain bin, the hardbacks were three bucks yesterday.
Starting point is 00:10:29 Paperbacks were a dollar. So I bought a lot. I've been particularly interested in 80s and 90s hardbacks lately, speaking of bargain bins, especially bargain bins of our youth. So I bought Presumed Innocent by Scott Toro. Classic. I think I texted you the other day and told you I'd gotten back into Tony Hillerman.
Starting point is 00:10:49 Yeah. After a long layoff, I bought a copy of Coyote Waits from the Trebek estate. The classic nonfiction book Barbarians at the Gate in Hardback about there. Final Cut, the book about the making of the movie Heaven's Gate. I was determined to buy any sports books, not sports not a huge category. Mm-hmm. Apparently for Alex Trebek. So I bought the memoirs of boxer Jack Johnson.
Starting point is 00:11:16 Oh, yeah. Yeah, and a book about the Toronto Raptors called Slam Dunk that was signed to Alex by some of his friends in the book. And we have a mutual friend Robert who's very interested in all things Richard Nixon. So I bought a copy of Bob Haldeman's Diaries for him because I figured he would appreciate the fact that that came from the Trebek Library. The Trebek Estate, yeah. And then I got two books, David, that we should use as door prizes in our next press box contest. actually our first press box contest one book was
Starting point is 00:11:51 instant weather forecasting in Canada wait say it again instant weather forecasting in Canada I'm in seems like a perfect Alex Trebek library item sure and the second one was a Cliff's Notes style guide to poems including rhyme of the ancient
Starting point is 00:12:10 mariner now I'm not sure this belonged to Alex Trebek but it filled my heart with warmth the thing. Here is Alex Trebek, the smart, educated person on television. And when he wants to recreate, reconnect with rhyme with the ancient mariner, he is not above pulling out a Cliff's note study guide to catch him up as you or I would be. I remember most of the rhyme of the ancient mariner from whatever high school class made us memorize it. But at least the beginning of it, I guess not most of it. But yeah, but doesn't that make you feel good? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:46 Alex Trebek, just like one of us. Just like one of us. Anyway, had an amazing time, and I felt that those books have a good home with me now and perhaps in the home of two of our listeners. Coming up on today's show, David, we're going to talk about how to watch the NFL draft, which starts Thursday.
Starting point is 00:13:05 We are going to deal with this breaking news, which is that Elon Musk may be about to buy Twitter. We'll have our own tribute to CNN Plus, the streaming service, which made us learn and laugh for one month. Plus, who's afraid of the HBO series winning time? All that more of the press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network.
Starting point is 00:13:31 Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David, Shoemaker, producer Erica Servantes here. On Thursday at 8 p.m. Easter, David, the three-day content extravaganza known as the NFL draft begins. Now, earlier this year, the prospects all came to the draft combine, where they demonstrated their skills, they got weighed, they got measured. We got a great question from listener
Starting point is 00:13:55 Conjali Padaya, who asks, what events would you include in a sports writer combine? Oh, man. We're looking for measurables here, traits, as the draft analyst calls it. I know that this is a little bit of a bygone era, but you definitely have to give them a little notepad and a, you know, a pin or a pencil.
Starting point is 00:14:20 Here's a trick. you give them the old-fashioned flip book spiral-bound at the top notepad, right? You put three, they get three pins in their pocket. Only one of them is going to work. And then somebody starts talking and they have to quickly just like draw and take notes. Wait, is this like a 1950s reporter aptitude test? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, come on, measurable.
Starting point is 00:14:40 We're going to talk measurables. Or you could just do a recall test, but that's not as much fun, right? Just like this coach is going to talk for five minutes. And then I'm going to quiz you on the things that he said afterwards. Yeah, and then, you know, you just, you play, play a video, a segment of, do you know that, they don't do this anymore, but like the WrestleMania fan fest for a while, they would do a thing where they would play the great moments in wrestling history, and then you would get to go and, like, play color commentator as, like, and call the, like, there was no announcing track.
Starting point is 00:15:10 It was just the thing, minus the announcers. And they would have a real WW announcer who would stand there in real life next to you and just be like, Hogan's lifting Andre or whatever. and then you get to be the cut. That's great. But anyway, they could have a thing where, like, they show you some iconic moment in sports history and you have, like, two minutes to come up with a lead, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:29 and just like. Ooh. I thought you were going to say you get to do color commentary on Jordan Davis's 40 time at the combine. You could do that too. You could do that. You can have so much fun with the sports writer combine. Yeah. I think we should test draft analysts about which words and phrases they use to describe picks.
Starting point is 00:15:47 Oh, yeah. For instance, I grade them down if they say immediate starter. I want them to say a prospect is a plug and play starter. What about a day one starter? Is that like a C? Is that like a B plus? Oh, or day one of the draft. Because you're not allowed to say first round.
Starting point is 00:16:05 Even that's the only round that happens on day one. You have to say he's going to be a day one pick. Also, I grade you down if you use the word injuries. Folks, those are medicals. Oh. medicals. Uh-huh. And you know my favorite is, you can never say the draft.
Starting point is 00:16:25 You can never say he's the best cornerback in the draft. You have to say he's the best cornerback in this draft. Yes. Because you want to make sure that the listener or viewer knows you're not talking about the 2024 or 2023 draft. No, I'm talking about the one happening Thursday, this draft, not the draft. also I want to measure them on their willingness to call players by their nicknames
Starting point is 00:16:49 remember when Adam Pac-Man Jones was in the draft and the real savvy draft analyst the real head would say you know I have Pac-Man Jones going 13th or going 12th this year I don't want to hear a draft analyst say
Starting point is 00:17:08 Cincinnati cornerback Ahmad Gardner I want to hear him say sauce gardener similarly, NC State offensive tackle Ikem Equino. No, no, Icky Aquano.
Starting point is 00:17:22 Oh, yeah. That shows that you're really in draft world. Also, I think every... But you think you just start making up nicknames. Wouldn't that just be so much better? Just test and see who's like,
Starting point is 00:17:34 oh yeah, this is what his coaches have been calling him since high school. See whether people at home actually know. Also, every draft analyst has to fall in love with a Fast undersized linebacker. Oh, yeah. Who this year is, I believe, George's Nikobe Dean.
Starting point is 00:17:49 I was going to say, though, I mean, that it's not exactly an underdog selection this year, but, you know, everybody's going to fall in love, of course. We talked the other day about the growth of the draft in media terms, which has still astounds me. And I say this as somebody who was, you know, a Mel Kuyper reader back in the 90s, I was on Twitter the day after the Cowboys lost to the 49ers in the playoffs this year. An absolutely just horrific event for Cowboys fans. And one of the drive time radio shows in Dallas tweeted,
Starting point is 00:18:27 here is Iowa Center Tyler Linderbaum, who we talked about on today's show. And I said, wait a second. The Dallas Cowboys have lost to the San Francisco 49ers. and you have pivoted already to Tyler Linderbom. To like unexciting draft picks. I mean, a center from Iowa.
Starting point is 00:18:51 You're pivoted to this. We couldn't even get one day of just being mad at the Cowboys. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. Yeah. And also just like the arms race of draft experts. ESPN used to just be Mel Kiper, who by the way is missing the live draft because he's unvaccinated.
Starting point is 00:19:09 Now they've got Mel and. and Todd McShay. They've got Matt Miller and Jordan Reed. The Athletic has Dane Bruegler, who did this big draft guide called The Beast. They've also got Deontay Lee. They've got Nate Tice doing draft stuff. And then there are a million independent draft experts at the same time.
Starting point is 00:19:30 So I was asking the NFL Network's Peter Schrager on the pod the other day, why did the draft become a huge, huge media event? This is what he said. And with the NFL, unlike the NBA, all 32 fan bases believe they can win the Super Bowl next season if they get the right guys in the draft. So the Bengals draft Jamar Chase, fifth overall, and they draft a couple other players later on in the draft. They get the kicker McPherson in the fourth and you put that together and holy shit, they're in the Super Bowl. Like the NFL, the parody is so big. I believe one of the reasons the draft is so popular is that every fan, whether they believe it or not,
Starting point is 00:20:14 thinks there's a chance that they're one or two pieces away and that this is the year. We're going to get that guy in the draft. Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, it's proven. I mean, there's a lot of reality to it, right? I mean, you see the leaps that you can take. Look at the, you know, Cincinnati this year. You can make a big difference.
Starting point is 00:20:30 And it's not just the first round, right? It's like the legendary draft classes are what we think about, right? You could just rebuild an offense in the draft if you nail every pick. Yeah, I think that's true. It does seem like there's something deeper to it, though, right? I mean, it's just, it's, there's something just more sort of intrinsic
Starting point is 00:20:51 to the kind of fans, the way we, the way that we do fandom these days than just thinking that you can rebuild your team and win. It's about, I mean, listen, it's about the surprise of it all, right? This is the, it's, it's predicting the unknowable up to the point. And then when you get there, it's like, it's the Royal Rumble. Like every, you know, every two minutes, there's a big surprise.
Starting point is 00:21:17 There's some music hits and you're just like, but you also prepare yourself for it, right? It's a lot more fun to watch the Royal Rumble when you know all the wrestlers. You're like, oh, Malik Willis, I've been talking about him for a week. Uh-huh. It's content, content, content in 10, 15 minute intervals. Totally right. When you talk about the way we do fandom now, part of it is we like to do fandom as a hypothetical. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:41 What would happen if the Lakers traded LeBron James this offseason? Yeah. What would happen if Anthony Davis got traded this offseason? That's the draft pick by pick. Like we don't know what's going to happen. So everything's a hypothetical. Yeah, and there's a certain sort of like, we love the hypotheticals. And we've gotten to a point where, like, we've all kind of agreed to embrace the hypotheticals.
Starting point is 00:22:14 You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not, like, by any, like, logical estimation, it makes more sense to just wait for the draft to happen and then have a discussion about what happened, right? Sure, sure. See where Jameson Williams goes. If he, like, if he ends up on the Packers, that's a fun conversation to have then. but it's more fun to think about, like, to imagine him on 12 different teams and argue which would be the best fit. Absolutely. Not to mention teams trading up to get Jameson.
Starting point is 00:22:43 Yeah. What would we have to do to get up to like 13, 15 range to make that deal? Dude, I was watching first take? I was watching first take. I believe this morning, maybe it was yesterday. I'm on the road. Everything's a blur. And they were doing like, what's your most shocking prediction from the draft?
Starting point is 00:22:59 So not in the, it's not the, in the set of your predictions, the thing that's most shocking. It was like, come up with something shocking. It was like, let's have a take here. And I mean, they were all over the place. But you see this thing happen a lot, right? Where it's like, like, tell me something, tell me something that would just, you know, that might happen. That would, that would really surprise everybody. And like, every serious, quote unquote, serious drafts analyst has, like, contingencies from major trades, like, predicting major trades.
Starting point is 00:23:28 and listen, some things are going to happen. And a lot of these guys are really plugged good enough to be predicting it and everything. But it just seems like we're having five conversations at once, right? And one of these conversations is fantasy booking. That's it. I mean, it's just like, let's just imagine something bonkers. That's absolutely what it is. I remember talking to Mike Mayock a few years ago before he went to the Raiders and actually got to make draft picks.
Starting point is 00:23:51 And he was saying that, like, we don't know anything more about what's going to happen in the draft. than we did 20 years ago. Now, maybe you could argue with just the speed of information now and your ability to read lots of different news sources, you know a little bit more, but we don't know much more than we did 20 years ago. So all those scenarios, all that fantasy booking has to stand in for actual information.
Starting point is 00:24:20 Right. Like, I don't know who the Cowboys are going to take at 24, but I have read 30 mock drafts. and out of those 30, I've gotten a dozen potential players. So in my mind, those dozen players, that's the hard dope. That's the information. Even if I don't know the answer to the question, I have just like all these scenarios in my mind,
Starting point is 00:24:45 which kind of become indistinguishable from information. Yes. And at some point, that trick happened, where it's like, well, I don't know who they're going to pick. what oh i can just give you all these enticing options and you will forget that you don't know the answer to the question just sort of start substituting that for the answer to the question yeah that's just really really fascinating plus by the way all these mock draft simulators you can do at pro football focus oh yeah where you run the thing and get to pick three rounds seven rounds
Starting point is 00:25:18 yes that's all fun so i mean that sort of begs the question the draft simulators the the sports radio story that you told at the beginning in this is a great example. I know this is a chicken or egg question. But does the need for content beget, like plant the seeds for this content? Or is this just so, is this just such a part of, of the what we,
Starting point is 00:25:45 do we just want it so badly that the content, you know, that these platforms have to find a way to give it to us? It's a great question. I think probably the former in the sense that it fills part of the calendar where there where there aren't NFL games. And this is what ESPN figured out in the early 80s. We don't have NFL football, but we can televise this NFL themed event in the spring.
Starting point is 00:26:15 And so we can get in and we can give you content to use that word here that is about the most popular sport in America. But then I think. your other point is exactly right that at some point people kept telling you the draft is important. Draft's really important. You build a team through the draft,
Starting point is 00:26:34 which we then took to not mean, okay, I should get a printout of all the players my team picked on Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening. I should do this intensive study of all 200 possible draft picks that my team could make. shovel this into my mouth
Starting point is 00:26:55 and only by doing that will I truly understand the draft as a process. Yes. Also, it just became a really fun game to play. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:04 I'm going to fall in love with a prospect. As we said last week, I mean, this is the hill I'm going to die on and I'm going to root for my team to take the guy I want him to take. Oh,
Starting point is 00:27:13 yeah. I am, the other funny thing about the draft is I think, and I got this from Bob Stern, who is a Dallas radio host, not the one I was referring to earlier. But he's a guy who does lots of draft analysis for the athletic.
Starting point is 00:27:29 And he told me a couple years ago, he said, the difference between being a really good drafter, both in real life and in the media, is like the difference between hitting 280 in baseball back when we used to do batting averages and 240. Nobody is bad. Not a huge statistical difference, but people pay a lot of attention.
Starting point is 00:27:52 Yes, and nobody's going to hit 500 at least for multiple years. Yeah. Jimmy Johnson, Bill Belichick, whoever we think did the draft really, really well, Bill Parcells. They're not going to be able to do that. So we're talking about a science, if that's the word for it, where you're getting things right maybe a third of the time. And more likely you're getting things right a fourth of the time or a fifth of the time. And that's the difference here. So there's this whole belief that like, man, dude, if I just crush tape and watch these guys and watch tons of college football and really, really study, I will understand the draft at some deep, you know, deep level.
Starting point is 00:28:37 And you probably certainly can know much more about players, but I just don't think human ability allows us to pick players at that rate, at least where you could get the players. If you told me, I'm going to get like the top 10 players in the draft, that's great. Obviously, I don't have a lot more success. But if I have one pick per round, I'm not going to hit very many times, even if I'm awesome at this. Yeah. Of course not. It's just a, man, it's just a fun game to play. You know, it just, it absolutely is, we, I think we're just constantly looking for things that would just take up all of our time if we had all of our time.
Starting point is 00:29:15 And none of us have all of our time. But it's just, we want to just give ourselves over to these things entirely. And the draft is just the most sort of expansive thing. I mean, you could really spend every moment of your day prepping for the draft. And you'd get a lot of stuff wrong at the end. But it's a fun game to play. You've been following the saga of Kvon-Tibodeau defensive end from Oregon? Sure.
Starting point is 00:29:40 Top five talent, as they say in this draft. Probably a top five to 10 pick. Danny Kelly and the excellent Ringer NFL draft guide compares him to a T-Rex in an F-14 when he's blasting off the edge in a game. Kavon Tibado has said and done certain things that have set off the tripwires of NFL teams and to a lesser extent NFL draft riders. He said he went to the University of Oregon because of quote brand associations at Oregon like Nike.
Starting point is 00:30:16 He made fun of the lesser education he would have gotten at the University of Alabama, another school that wanted him to go there. He launched his own cryptocurrency. He generally has a huge personality. He has the particular personality that says, look, I am going to be in charge of my career. And this dates back to high school, transferred to high school a couple of times. I'm going to take charge of my career and I'm going to act and talk like a businessman and an entrepreneur in addition to acting and talking like a football player. well this of course has brought all the usual responses you know does gavontibato really care about
Starting point is 00:30:53 football does he have the desire to be great is he coachable and peter shregor found one quote where he said something like there's nothing a coach could tell me that i don't already know but what this whole thing suggested to me is that like we have now set up college football for these guys to be entrepreneurs yeah you're in high school you're a big recruit you get to go get an nil deal and the schools, whatever they say, are helping set up those NIL deals. Yeah. We're going to make sure that our big boosters and big corporate sponsors down here in Austin are ready to lay out the welcome mat so we can get these prospects. So it's really weird to say the whole system of college football is set up for these guys to be entrepreneurs and then penalize them when they talk like that as professional athletes.
Starting point is 00:31:43 I mean, it just feels like we just have to do. We needed to do this anyway, but we have to think about prospects in a completely different way. I agree. I agree. I mean, listen, I saw somebody, one of the big draft heads, draft next was said some teams are cooling on him because, you know, I think he just specifically said because he seems to have outside interests other than football, right? Okay. Which is on its face ridiculous, right? Even if you're like some paternalistic old-fashioned, you know, guy in the office who, who, who, you know, doesn't like to, you know, has like, like, really outmoded ideas about how to draft.
Starting point is 00:32:24 You wouldn't you rather your draft pick be at home working on his crypto, you know, his crypto portfolio than just about anything else? You know, with this free time? I would. Yes. And, and the idea, like, the outside interest. I mean, obviously it's a euphemism. whatever but it's just it's so it's so ridiculous nobody you don't you you you you can't want people i mean i guess i guess if you're if your model is we want like dodo's then that's fine because you
Starting point is 00:32:58 you know that and that makes sense to say like well if you if you if i believe that you can only hold one thing in your head then that's but but no one's like that and no one want no one should want to surround themselves with people like that right no one should no one was ever like that right That's what I mean. And no one should have ever been required to be like that. But now we have a system specifically set up where it's like, dear college football player, be an entrepreneur who is maximizing your earnings, your quote unquote brand from age 18 or perhaps before. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:31 Wouldn't you rather have somebody who's already figured it out or just figuring it out instead of somebody who's going to have to figure it out while they're learning how to play in the NFL? Exactly. Or somebody who's going to go to the combine and be like, I am going to first. forget everything I just learned over the previous three or four years and pretend that the only thing in my life is football. Like, that is all I speak about. That is all I ever think about. No, no, no. The system was set up for you to speak and think about the other stuff. Yeah. Why would we do that? You're right. All these people are prepping, right? They're training for their interviews as much as they're training for the, they're 40 times or whatever. And the idea
Starting point is 00:34:06 that somebody who didn't prep for that should be penalized. I mean, someone should be penalized for showing you potentially who they really are. It's just sort of ridiculous. And I don't think that like coachability, quote unquote, or willingness to work hard. I don't think those are nutty things to inquire about. Like if you and I were starting a sports website, we would be interested in how much are, how hard our potential employees were willing to work. and, you know, would they take our advice when we gave them advice?
Starting point is 00:34:40 Like that is, of course, like important, right? And especially if you're choosing between an hyper-talented player who would be the number three pick or a hyper-talented player who would be the number four pick. Something like that. But we have just gotten into really, really weird territory. Well, that's, anytime that you get too deep into this draft talk, it gets really uncomfortable. Speaking of which, let's do the overwork Twitter joke of the week, David, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.
Starting point is 00:35:09 Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. David, I've got an item from Nerdist for you. Okay. If you're in the market for a wedding ring, there is now a line of DC Comics wedding bands that feature some of their most iconic characters. Go on. You can propose with the help of a popular. comic book character.
Starting point is 00:35:36 It's an overwork Twitter joke to write, wife so serious. Wife so serious. A little joker joke there for you, David. If you had David rethinking how he handled his own proposal, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. In the notebook dump, David,
Starting point is 00:36:06 word just came down as we were recording segment number one. that in the words of the New York Times Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion. What the paper calls a victory by the world's richest man. Who's used to taking so many L's in his daily life. Yeah, he really needed one of those, you know.
Starting point is 00:36:31 Get them out of the gutter. You send me some Megan McArdle analysis. What do you make of Elon Musk and Twitter? It's a really bizarre thing. decision. Well, I mean, it's not just Megan McCartle's tweets. We could pass back and forth a bunch. I think most people's sort of rational
Starting point is 00:36:49 analysis is that this is just an incredibly unnecessary or somewhere in the unnecessary to ill-advised end of the scale way to spend $40 billion. Right? I mean, it doesn't make a lot of business sense. There's probably, there's a very clear limit to how much money
Starting point is 00:37:07 you could get out of this. And he's actually, I believe, Musk, I believe is on the record saying he's going to he's not he doesn't care about profitability so that's you know makes the and even more sort of stark financial um maneuver in that in that direction uh as a um you know a lot of people particularly a lot of musk supporters seem to be viewing this as sort of like a novelty right i mean this is sort of like this would be like if he was the world's biggest jeopardy fan him going to the estate sale and just saying yes you know and like it's it's it's it's it's it's It's like, that's a ridiculous way to spend your money.
Starting point is 00:37:43 And yet, I got a lot more money, right? This is, I think, like, up to the value of this, and he's, I guess, taking out some loans or whatever, but the value is like up to, what, a quarter, a fifth of his net worth, which is... There's a lot of money. A lot of money. And you talk about... You talk about how much money, you know, rich people, it's like, it's not nothing, man. And, like, go...
Starting point is 00:38:01 If you know anybody with a lot of money, they don't have most of that money in a checking account, right? I mean, they don't... And they likely don't have a lot of that money in, like, stocks and other... bonds at other things that they could liquidate quickly. You know, I mean, it's a lot, it's, it, even for someone as rich as Elon Musk, spending a 20% of your net worth, taking 20% of your net worth and lighting it on fire will change the way you live your life, right? I mean, it's like, so it's, it's not just, it's funny money, but it's not.
Starting point is 00:38:28 And, you know, I've heard, I saw somebody say that, you know, hypothesized that this is actually just like a political move or it's sort of a political signal that could potentially help. Tesla become a car for all of America and not just the sort of blue state elites, right? If the only way that Tesla's market share grows significantly is if, you know, Red State, if like farmers are driving Tesla trucks to, you know, do their to, to and from the fields every day or whatever. I mean, that'd be the far end example. Even that, this is a lot of money to spend.
Starting point is 00:39:08 If you were just like, if an ad agency was like, Like, we have magical powers and we can make this commercial work now, give us $40 million. I think a lot of companies would be like, I'm not sure if that's a good use of money. You know, I mean, so it's, there's a lot of question marks here. I think that, I think this was from the McArdle tweets that I sent you. I think that the, the, the doom saying is, well, listen, I don't, I don't want to, there's one thing we've learned in the past decade. It's a, you know, we can, we should leave the rose color glass. in the back of the desk drawer that they're in.
Starting point is 00:39:43 But I do think that the doom saying is probably a little bit overstated just in so much as like it's, I mean, the doom saying for on behalf of liberal Twitter, you know, is a little bit overstated. I think that we've seen over and over again from people of very different ideologies that the great, like the sort of most problematic wild west of unmoderated online conversations is just, it. Like, it just, if you moderate it all, you have to moderate to, you have to do about 90% of what Twitter's already doing, right? You might not kick off President Donald Trump, but the vast majority of the people who have decamped or have been forced off Twitter to find homes elsewhere will probably continue to be forced off Twitter. You know, I mean, it's just sort of the way that these, it's the way that the moderation works for better or worse. It all just sort of bends towards a curve, you know, in the same direction. but there's a lot of reason, I guess, to be worried. If Twitter is your life, it's certainly going to change.
Starting point is 00:40:53 And I, but as far as like what this means for, I mean, on a practical level, who knows? I mean, I'm sure there's going to be, I don't know. I don't know. I think that probably the most, like the great, I don't know, the biggest, I saw some someone that said, you know, all of your DMs are Elon Musk's now, right? So, so like, be careful what you tweet. Be careful what you message. It's like, well, you already, you've already given all those away, right? I mean, we've, we've already handed those over to people that we don't know and we don't know what their motives are and they're probably more
Starting point is 00:41:29 oblique, potentially worse than whatever the, your caricature of Elon Musk is. I don't know. I guess I'm probably a pessimist enough that it's hard to, that, you know, the, this new pessimism isn't really making much of a dent. But I do think that there's, but I'll say this. As much as I don't know why and you don't know why we can't imagine what the real motive for Elon Musk doing this is, I think that that means that we don't really know what Twitter looks like in six months or in a year. Because if we don't understand what it's happening, it's impossible to imagine what's going to, you know, it's impossible to imagine what it's going to become. So I just, I don't think it's, I think that we, can all make predictions and we can all try to read the tea leaves and whatever. But, you know,
Starting point is 00:42:16 we can't, we don't know who's a day one pick in the NFL draft and we don't know what's going on with Twitter right now. And that's, you know, it's unsettling for people like us, like our cohort, who spend a lot of our lives there. Yeah, no, absolutely. And to your point about moderation, McCartle tweeted this, which that was interesting. It will be much, much harder than most people think to remake Twitter as free speech, Inc. Twitter's moderation policies are driven by its left-leaning customer base, the preferences of advertisers who don't want to offend said base, and the cultural preferences of its progressive junior staff, as by the desires of senior management. Musk can certainly order people to take the heavy hands off the ban hammer, but day in and day
Starting point is 00:42:57 out, it is still lower-level employees who will be making the ban decisions because no one wants an actually unmoderated platform full of spam and child porn. So that's an interesting point. Your Trump point is also fascinating. I was reminded by the New York Times story today that Donald Trump is doing his own Twitter still, truth, social, or allegedly doing something. I'd actually forgotten about that and had some comment like, hey, I might not even want to come back to Twitter, even if they'll have me. But I guess Trump's return is something that we should probably put the countdown clock on right now.
Starting point is 00:43:34 Yeah, I mean, there's also the sort of, in the grand scheme of what could possibly be going on here. I mean, what the end result could be. I mean, there's a sort of Trumpy version. There's a sort of Trumpy ending to the story, right? When we're talking about moderation about free speech, I guess is the big thing. Because like, you know, when Greenwald's already out there saying liberals are running scare, the notion that free speech is going to return, whatever. I mean, we might just end up with a, with Musk sort of Trumpily redefining free speech.
Starting point is 00:44:03 I'm going to give back, I'm going to give Trump back his platform. I'm going to change these two rules. And look, free speech has been restored. And now we own the concept. of free speech. And if you have, if you disagree with how we define it, then, you know, you're, you're the, you're the anti-American crazy. Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. One more media story for you, David, about CNN Plus. Hmm.
Starting point is 00:44:25 While we were away, the Anderson Cooper leather jacket era of American life has ended. CNN Plus was killed by Discovery Inc. CNN's new owner, just over three weeks after it launched. Saturday is going to be the final day of the streaming service. Reader D&V asks us, did we ever ascertain who was talking to Chris Wallace? Well, that's the problem when the series gets cut off so quickly is that you don't get to, that cliffhanger will just live on forever. There's going to be interviews with the showrunner in like 10 years.
Starting point is 00:45:01 It's like, by the way, who? It's been long enough. Can you tell us now who was talking to Chris Wall? You have any unfinished scripts? so we can possibly mind for where this series would have gone. Who did you, what was the plan for season two? Who would be talking to him then? Lots of people noted the supreme irony here, which is that CNN over the last month and
Starting point is 00:45:22 change has been praised for its coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yeah. More than CNN has been praised in a long, long time. People have said, wow, finally, you know, CNN doing what? what it was put on this earth to do, which is cover a complicated, breaking story in a dangerous place. You know,
Starting point is 00:45:45 we've seen on Matthew Chance out there. We've seen all these memorable images. Then they put out a streaming service, but it's not CNN news that we get on cable. It's CNN the lifestyle brand. Mm-hmm. With shows like Jake Tapper's Book Club and Anderson Cooper's parenting show.
Starting point is 00:46:06 So here's my question for you. We have thought about this idea of what the world looks like when it's a screaming service. And I think come to the conclusion that what people want is a la carte programming. I want to watch Bridgeton right now at 8.23 p.m. Pacific. Push the button and I'm going to watch it. Is there such a thing as a la carte news? well a lot of people have been trying to figure that out for a long time if if ESPN hasn't cracked the model
Starting point is 00:46:44 of having a 30 second news break between every episode of Bridgeton that you're watching figured out like the whatever script they'd have to write to make that happen I find it hard to imagine that a hard news agency is going to do it for them right I mean that just think of all of the ways that you would potentially integrate a la carte news into your consumption and think of how zero of those things have happened. But I mean, like, honestly, the most successful, like, news tech move in the past five years
Starting point is 00:47:14 might be, like, the daily existence. And that's like an archaic form. That's radio, you know. So, yeah, I mean, it's, I think that we can all imagine a way that Alacart News would work. But it's, it's like miles more complicated. and similarly less practical, then, like, is there a way that you can, like,
Starting point is 00:47:39 all, like, you know, read articles a la carte by pushing a button and paying five cents out of your imaginary e-wallad. It's like, yeah, that's, we've all had that, and we've all been able to imagine that for a decade, and that's never happened. Yeah. Right?
Starting point is 00:47:52 So, yeah, I mean, I think that there's a, I think that it's, that's, that's the, that's the, that's the central question for CNN Plus and anything else. Is there a place for it in the, in the, in the kind of, ecosystem. Now there's not. And so what you do is that you carve out a space that kind of exists as a placeholder until someone figures out what to do, how this is going to work. Right. So if you have, like, if you spend a billion dollars, I think, was that how much money that
Starting point is 00:48:22 they greenlit to spend on over four years or something like that? That's what I read. Yes, a billion dollars years. So if you spend a billion dollars every four years, so let's say over a decade you spend, let's just be conservative, say $2 billion. And then at the end of the decade, someone's like, I figured this thing out. And then they can get in on it. They already have the infrastructure to pivot to whatever the new platform, angle, whatever it is, right? We talked when they were launching it about, you know, if you have the stomach to let it develop, there can be value here. As a farm team, but also as a, as a, you know, as a spawning ground for potential, for tightness.
Starting point is 00:49:02 of new content, right? Who knows? Maybe like, maybe book review TV shows are the next big thing. Well, Jake Tapper's going to be on the forefront figuring that out, right? I mean, there's potential to learn.
Starting point is 00:49:12 Would we love that to be the case? But yes. Yeah, there's potential to learn from this in so many ways. Now, when it came, when the word came out that they were canceling it so quickly, you know, we were texting amongst other people.
Starting point is 00:49:23 And I was just like, sort of apoplectic. I was just like, how, there's no way that you've learned enough in this short amount of time. to already throw up your hands. And then there's also this issue of like, how many people are you just convinced to leave their jobs,
Starting point is 00:49:40 both, you know, public faces, sure, but also just the people working behind the scenes. And then you're just going to let them go. Now, funnily enough, I feel kind of, I feel like I understand the whole situation a lot better now. There's been a number of big articles about it that I wish I could cite, but I've been traveling. So I'm just like reading stuff on the fly.
Starting point is 00:49:55 But for one thing, it seems like they're talking about, you know, a fairly, like a fairly good compensation package for people. Like they're going to have opportunities to keep their jobs and the big, in the parent company. If they don't, they're talking about like six months of severance, which is all things considered pretty healthy.
Starting point is 00:50:14 Not as good as keeping your job, but, you know, but there you go. And then it seems like the decision making was, like there's not a logic to it. This was discovery coming in deciding we're going to shut this thing down immediately.
Starting point is 00:50:30 Yeah. Looking at that billion dollar figure and being like, nope. I mean, I didn't read this and maybe this is out there. But in reading the most straight telling of the story, Warner Media green lit the billion dollar figure after the sale had been approved, but before it had actually taken effect, man, if I was sitting over in Discovery Side and it was just like trying to figure out what the financial future of this gigantic company I just require,
Starting point is 00:50:55 we just acquired is going to be in there. And then they just greenlit a billion dollars without mentioning it. or something, I would just be like, yeah, we're going to shut that down when we get there. That's a real dick move, you know? That's like if you sell your house and then like before the new people move in, you just like spill cow's blood all over the living room and just, you know, have like a crazy party. It's like, you don't get to do that. CNN Plus.
Starting point is 00:51:19 I don't know why I went to cows blood so quickly. But yeah, it's, listen, it makes a certain amount of sense. It's like totally ruthless. It's crazy that all the people at CNN Plus. were just like met with radio silence. They basically found out, they had to suss out the fact that they weren't going to survive
Starting point is 00:51:35 based on the fact that there was a discovery exec who was talking about, who was talking about a future giant streaming platform that combined Discovery and HBO Max and didn't mention CNN Plus. So yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a terrible situation. But like, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:51:56 I would love to hear from somebody who is like, if a CNN Plus true believer, Like, were there, like, what was, what is the most CNN plus positive point of view you could possibly take? Well, we, it's people are idiots and everybody should have been watching it and it should have had a million subscribers and every, like, what is the, what is the, what is the. I'm not sure we could find that case. I bet it's the one that you made over text, which is, you just didn't learn it. You didn't give it enough time to learn anything. No.
Starting point is 00:52:23 But even if it was poorly conceived, and even if it had a bunch of shows that people, even people who like, can rely on CNN didn't really feel they needed. It went off the air so it went away so quickly that you just didn't have time to learn anything. Yeah. Like the point of it, there's no, there's no version of creating CNN Plus where the point of it is making money, at least not in the first, you know, five years or something. That just can't be built in to the pitch. at some point you might be making a lot of money. But yeah, I just, so like what, so I don't know, just beyond that, it's not going to be,
Starting point is 00:53:06 it shouldn't be a financial conversation. I mean, it could, it should be in the sense where you're just, if you're taking over the company, you're like, well, there's a billion dollars we don't need to spend. Right. The financial conversation is how do we get from the cable bundle, which is going to go away into the world of streaming. Yeah. And is there a place in that world for CNN?
Starting point is 00:53:23 I saw Alex Sherman who's on CNBC report. that maybe what they want to do now is have some kind of like mega streamers. So you have HBO Max, maybe it's called HBO Max. It includes the Discovery Plus stuff. It includes maybe Turner Sports, Sherman said,
Starting point is 00:53:42 and it includes elements of CNN. So this is just one big thing rather than having CNN stand on its own and try to compete on its own as a stream. To have that as part of it. But like, but there still seems to be a concerted effort to, it seems like there were some sort of, you know,
Starting point is 00:54:02 hurt feelings at some point in like, well, that's, that's too, that makes it too personal. It does seem like that the discovery people came in with a very specific idea of what they wanted to do, and CNN Plus was so opposite it, that it, that it needed to be shut down, lest there be any confusion about what, you know,
Starting point is 00:54:20 for what, whenever their, their version of this launches or whatever. I mean, the Discovery Network, is obviously just a crazy empire. And only since they acquired Time Warner, I think, that I fully come to grips.
Starting point is 00:54:31 Well, I guess only since they launched the Discovery app that was I aware of how much of their content I had been consuming on a fairly regular basis, right? And especially not just me, like the, you know, three generations of my family or consume it all in very different ways in great volume. But, you know, I think that they're probably, with the venture the size,
Starting point is 00:54:53 they're probably going to be a little bit more cautious about how they do stuff, like, you know, how they, how they launch into those new worlds. And there's a lot more security in doing it, sort of the way you describe. One last topic for you, Dave, before we go. I want to talk to you about winning time. Ooh.
Starting point is 00:55:08 Speaking of HBO, the series about the formation of the 1980s Showtime Los Angeles Lakers, based on Jeff Pearlman's book, with some exceptions. Because the show has gotten tweaked by a number of the Lakers and Lakers personnel that it is portraying. Namely, Jerry West,
Starting point is 00:55:33 who is portrayed on winning time, is throwing a trophy through the window in his office, laying on the ground in his underwear and crying, getting angry on a golf course. It's all according to the L.A. Times. West's attorney has demanded a retraction and apology. called the show a baseless and malicious assault and says winning time falsely and cruelly portrays Mr. West
Starting point is 00:56:01 as an out of control intoxicated rageaholic. What do we think of the battle over winning time? I mean, I don't know, I don't know, from an outside perspective, as a viewer of winning time, it's sort of like the more over the top the caricatures are, the less I really admit, well, the less I probably believe them to be true in any meaningful way,
Starting point is 00:56:26 but also the less I'm sort of interested in it. You know, I don't think there's nothing, especially the way the show is made, especially the sort of tongue-in-cheek presentation of the whole thing, is it's all about excess, it's very clearly sort of derivative.
Starting point is 00:56:43 I think that, I don't know, I can't, I'm trying to imagine what Jerry West's character on the show would have to do for it to materially change the way I think about Jerry West. I mean, something, whatever it is, a lot darker than whatever,
Starting point is 00:56:56 than what they've had him doing so far. When you talk about the caricature stuff, it really has become the Adam McKay method. It reminds me in a way of the movie Vice, where you had this very well-acted, intricate performance of Dick Cheney. And then he had Steve Carell playing Don Rumsfeld, like he was a character in Anchorman.
Starting point is 00:57:19 And it coexisted in the same movie. Yeah. And here it's John C. Riley playing Jerry Buss, very interestingly, very smartly. And then you have Jerry West. And you're like, how did one writing team come up with both of these characters? Why is one really layered and interesting and fun to watch? And the other is a cardboard cutout. That is clearly the McKay method.
Starting point is 00:57:46 Yeah. I also think you and I have talked about this many times before. I'm not sure ever on this podcast. but like people lose their minds when they are confronted with the idea of historical fiction. They know what fiction is. A series is completely made up. They know what a documentary is.
Starting point is 00:58:08 But when you're in that middle ground where you say, this is based on real events, but we have taken narrative liberties, we have made things up, to get us from point A to point B in an efficient way. The first response of seemingly every journalist on the planet is to write an op-ed and say, you know, this didn't really happen. It didn't really happen this way.
Starting point is 00:58:34 This movie is not an entirely truthful document to which I always say it never claimed to be. Go read a book, you know, if you want to know exactly what happened. Go read Jeff Berman's book, apparently. But it's funny. We can set aside for the moment that most of the documentaries on whatever related subject that you see in your life are probably largely untrue as well. Okay, but that's part of the point here. And Fentanyi made this when I was in the office the other day.
Starting point is 00:59:07 Documentaries are a huge thing on Netflix right now. Or you just have YouTube. Like I can find a documentary-like substance about virtually any subject on the planet. Yeah. And when you can do that and then you have a show that takes narrative literacy, it blows people's minds because they're like, wait a second. I just watch this documentary and I know that's not what happened. So they're actually maybe more annoyed by a show like winning time at this point in history
Starting point is 00:59:36 than they would have been 10, 20 years ago when the information wasn't as accessible. Yeah. Yeah, but it's still a matter of like what truth you're, well, you're interested in believing, right? I mean, I'm sure Jeff Roman's book is like entirely true, but it relies on firsthand accounts from other people to tell the story, right? I mean, history is inherently subjective. Totally. Now, that's different than historical fiction. That's different than what Adam McKay is doing.
Starting point is 01:00:04 And certainly there's some characters, Jerry West, probably one of them who exist in the show to serve a purpose, right? Not everybody could be the hero of the stories. And people have to have, like, functionary roles. And that's just the way stories are told. I just think that, I mean, in some ways, goes to the sort of conversations that we've had about podcasts versus writing versus Twitter. It's sort of like whatever, or TV shows,
Starting point is 01:00:29 whatever platform is easiest for other people to digest is the one that you're going to be remembered by. You know, it's like we talked about with, like, Jamel Hill, how she would get in trouble for tweets that said stuff that she'd said live on the air, you know, but no, it's just so much easier to like email around a tweet that people were, you know, sort of pointing at that. and that sort of became way overblown.
Starting point is 01:00:50 That became the way that people digested anything about her. I mean, listen, from Jerry West's point of view, from anybody that's in this point of view, every day of your life, people are saying, oh, my God, did you see winning time? And the only thing you can really do is go watch winning time. I mean, the only way that you can address all these people, you could say no, but if someone's like, listen, they're making fun of you, whatever, you're going to go subject yourself to watching winning time and come out and come out even more angry than you went in, right? Well, that's not true. It's like, well, you start from a odd play. Listen, it would be terrible
Starting point is 01:01:24 if there was a documentary about us. Yes. Or worse, if there was like a documentary, a mockumentary, if there was a historical fiction TV show about the ringer and we were like caricatures just like hanging around in the background, you know, like we would probably be mad. But it's sort of beside the point, you know? I mean, it's your, you're, I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't be mad. Maybe it would be nice to be remembered as something that off the wall, that interesting, that, I don't know, a personality that big.
Starting point is 01:02:01 I don't know what I would say. But it's fair to imagine that any rationality team would be pissed off about it. But there's also a point where you're just like, guess what? You've made millions and millions of dollars in your life being a public figure. whether or not you like to look at yourself that way. People are interested in this story. You know, and it's a story at the end of the day. I'm trying to imagine the Grantland narrative series
Starting point is 01:02:26 that has me sitting in my, in front of my computer, you know, stewing and being jealous of other writers and, you know, jealous of other people's success. I'm not sure I'd have much of a defamation case. If that were the betrayal. Speaking of which, There was a really good story in the Hollywood reporter by Winston Cho about whether Jerry West can win a defamation case against the creators of Winning Time. There we go.
Starting point is 01:02:56 Turns out putting the disclaimer in front of your series, as Winning Time does, does not get you off necessarily. Now, Cho says it's very tough for Jerry West to win a case like this because he's a public figure. so he would have to prove actual malice. But a really interesting feature of this is that winning time, like many Adam McKay joints, has characters breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the audience. In this case, the Jerry Buss character breaks as a fourth wall and tells the audience,
Starting point is 01:03:29 Jerry West, head coach of the Lakers, considered a true gentleman of the sport to everyone who does not know him. And a lawyer tells Cho that that would be, be a massive hurdle for the producers to overcome. When the screenwriter is being deposed, he's going to have a very hard time denying that he meant for the audience to believe that he's showing the real Jerry West. That's a very good fact for Westside and very bad for the producers. So by breaking the fourth wall, which many people, present company included, have found a very
Starting point is 01:03:59 annoying feature of this series. You could have actually made it easier for West to potentially prevail in court. There's a lot of ways in which legal truth doesn't really match real truth. This might not be one of them explicitly, but to me, having a character break the fourth wall and turn it, like, whatever we believe about the truthiness, sorry, the truthfulness of an episode of winning time, I think we can all agree that Jerry West didn't stop time and make a 45-degree turn and introduce himself to anyone, right? Like, that didn't actually happen. So it seems to me that it makes the opposite, it makes the opposite case, right? No matter what he says in that, we are not depicting reality here. Right. But it's funny, right? Like, I'm speaking to the audience. And somehow
Starting point is 01:04:55 that is an appearance of truth, despite putting a disclaimer at the top saying, look, some event here have been fictionalized. Just a very funny concept. I had not thought of that. Yeah, I don't know. And they broke the fourth wall in like Shakespeare's historical plays. I don't think anybody was confused about it. I don't think that made it into the history textbook. You don't think Polonius is going to sue? No, no, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can, listen, I believe that that would be a thing that the lawyer would bring up in court.
Starting point is 01:05:23 I would believe that the whole case turned on that. If it did, it would be stupid, but that could happen. Cyber David Chewmaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about Duke University basketball after Coach Kay was Blue Man Regroup. Love it. Today's headline comes from Charles Snoddle, David.
Starting point is 01:05:44 It's from the website of WRBL, the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Georgia. Here's a story. An Alabama man, apparently an older man, he is suing Kraft Heinz Foods. He is upset about Countrytime Lemonade. Countrytime Lemonade. Had not thought about Country Time. Countrytime Lemonade in a while. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 01:06:09 We should do a whole podcast about brands that dominate random subgroups of food. Yeah. Like Mr. Peanut. Is anybody really attached to Mr. Peanut? Or just kind of, Mr. Peanut, sure. That's not sounds like a good thing. No, he's like a lovable character on the outside, but he runs the peanut mafia when we're not looking at him.
Starting point is 01:06:30 Per W. RBL, David. While Kraft Hein says it's 19 ounce canisters of powdered lemonade. mix make eight quarts of lemonade, the amount of powder provided only makes six quarts of lemonade. That is the heart of the lawsuit. What was WRBL's strained pun headline? I was going to go when life gives you lemons.
Starting point is 01:06:55 But now I'm thinking it's a glass half empty pun. Is it when life gives you lemons? It is not. Sorry, I was only asking because of the way you reacted. Women. How about country time? Oh, well, that's not what I was saying at all.
Starting point is 01:07:18 Country time. How about Cormick McCarthy? What? What? Cohen brothers? No, I know. No country for old. Country time for old men?
Starting point is 01:07:39 No country time for old men. What? Not sure that totally heads up, but it's pretty amazing. No country time for old men. That's a good one. It is good. He's David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis.
Starting point is 01:07:53 Production, Magic Bear, Chriservantes. Later this week, author Don Winslow talks about his new novel and crime fiction. Plus, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.

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