The Press Box - Hurricane Dorian Videos, the Rebooting of Buttigieg, and Conservatives and Dave Chappelle | The Press Box

Episode Date: September 3, 2019

Hurricane Dorian coverage (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week  (16:30), the rebooting of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign (19:00), a bedbug saga update (27:15), the conservative alliance with Dave Chappelle (34:00), and more. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer podcast network. I'm Liz Kelly. With the NFL season a week away and the ringers fantasy football coverage gearing up, we have released our first ever fantasy football hall of fame. We assembled a panel of voters including Bill Simmons, Cousin, Sal, Robert Mays, Mallory Rubin, and more to induct the 25 best fantasy football players of all time. You can find the rankings by going directly to fantasy football.com. And for more fantasy football coverage, check out the Tennessee Football Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Roer.com. You can find the rankings. wherever you get your podcasts. David, a handful of conservatives on Twitter have found themselves with an unlikely hero. Dave Chappelle. What I want to know is, what other entertainers from evil liberal culture

would you recommend to our friends on the right? Oh my gosh, I wonder who they're, I mean, Chris is the young around here. Maybe you can help me with this. Do you think they'd like Lizzo? Like, what is the... is Lana Del Rey a crypto conservative

and we don't know The conservatives We have a question The conservatives think The conservatives still think That Bill Maher is a liberal Because he's one of those guys That I can imagine them like

Watching every week and just being like You know he's making a lot of really good points I don't know Yeah I have a feeling Bill Maher's kind of been disowned by everybody Because I think he makes everybody so mad That he has a gift for it I'm not sure he has it

Yeah What I'm I was thinking when I saw this story was how many kind of fading comedians could just easily rebrand as the conservative comedian and basically host every night of the RNC next year. I mean, that just seems like such an easy career move. Oh, yeah, that's totally true. I mean, name your favorite, name your favorite conservative. I mean, Ricky Jervase, who I think we might come up later in this conversation, 100%.

Bill Burr is about a millimeter away. I mean, Jay Leno, I think, is probably one of the more liberal guys that'll come on the list, but he's fully embraced by, you know, like... We'd take that gig at this point. Absolutely true. There's always, I mean, you know, we don't even need to get into like the Joe Rogan friends part of the conversation. I think he's already found the audience that he needs to find. But like, at my house last weekend, we watched both the original blue collar comedy tour

and the original Kings of Comedy. probably a lot of stuff in the original Kings of Comedy that would go over pretty well with the blue color comedy tour crowd in 2019 and I could definitely see like Steve Harvey just making the Maga move if the right paycheck presented itself and I think every comedian sort of right there

I think that's right. We are the Catcher Rising Star of Media Podcasts this is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots to get to today. We're going to talk about the reboot of Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign.

An update on the New York Times Bedbug saga. We'll talk about the new conservative alliance with Dave Chappelle. And we'll make a climb to the top of Mount Journalism. But David, I want to start off by talking to you about the big tragic story of Labor Day weekend, which was Hurricane Dorian. It was a Category 5 hurricane at one point with Rins that reached up to 180 miles per hour, according to the New York Times. It seemed to stop moving over the Bahamas,

making for some very eerie weather map television. The prime minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Menace, calls Dorian's damage a historic tragedy. And one thing that was striking to me, as I watched the coverage, was the extent to which the media, both TV and print, relied on user video to show the scope of the devastation.

We saw lots of video from the Abaco Islands which has 17,000 residents, five deaths were reported there early on and damaged thousands of homes. Here was part of one widely circulated video from the Abaco Islands. Please pray for us. Please pray for us, everyone, please pray for us.

Me and my baby, everyone that stay in an apartment building will be stuck right here. Please pray for us. I see y'all, please. Pray for us. Pray for Abaco, please. I'm begging y'all.

My baby is only four of us. That voice belonged to Gertha Joseph 34 years old who posted that account on Facebook live. According to the Guardian, she and her infant son were later rescued, so they are fine, thankfully. I guess the first observation, David, is just a sense that this is another one of those cases that in this world where we presumably know everything and can see everything instantly, something like this happens. and we are left to rely on desperate people who are in their addicts or on the roof, have the roof of their house torn off, to basically tell us the story through harrowing videos and Facebook posts and stuff like that. And it's just,

it's strange and it's, and it's moving and it's, and it really is staggering. Yeah. I mean, I think that in, in tropical storms past, especially, you know, in years past,

we would, at best, be hearing these stories second or third hand from a reporter who was, you know, in a rain park knee-deep in beach water while everybody watching at home was sort of like half seriously asking what they were doing out there. It's funny, I mean, not funny. It's interesting, I guess, that in like a moment like this where the real story can really consume

our lives and consume the news media. In some ways, and again, like you said, this is partially a byproduct of the social media era of the modern internet age, but it really just shows the sort of inadequacy of news media. Or this is a moment when synthesis, such as we're used to experiencing it isn't really necessary.

And in the modern era, obviously, it's not necessary for even, you know, the bare bones of just conveyance of, or, you know, editing of material. You know, this is, this is a, we're getting a direct line and, and, I don't know, it feels like nothing else really matters. Yeah. Inadequacy is an interesting word. I guess it's just a reminder that we don't, we don't have everything covered.

And there are places on the globe where, you know, there weren't, there were a couple of local news services there. I don't believe, at least in the, in the reading that I did that there was an American, correspondent who was over there, at least in the Abaco Islands, when the storm hit. We did have a lot of those people in ponchos, but they were all in Florida, places like that, watching the storms come in. I was also interested in your take on this tweet by Casa de Oruga, which was tweeted out over the weekend.

Person in Hurricane's Eye. Oh, my God, everything I know is destroyed and it's about to happen again. Media on Twitter. Hi there. Sounds like that sucks. own the copyright to this video, we'd love to use it. Yeah. What do you make of that?

Because it does put us, it does put the media in this interesting position because on the one hand, you're trying to spread the word. You're trying to, you know, in any way you can show the devastation without having your own cameras there, as we just said. But on the other, there is something exploitive almost. about, you know, sort of drooling over any piece of coverage that you can then, you know, retweet, put on your, put on your news accounts, Twitter feed to, you know, send around the world. What do you make of that problem? Wow. Talk about inadequacy. You know, social media platforms in general are not very functional places to communicate in terms of nuance, in terms of sarcasm, in terms of any number of things. And this is just one of those things. where, I mean, I'm not sure that the form, I mean, that the formal, I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I don't think the, the news outlets are particularly happy with the system as it's evolved, either. Um, but I don't think that it's a, you know, to say that it's like a, the negative that, that they would be trying to use this footage, because, like, we just said, I mean, I think that this unfiltered view from, from, from the, from the, you know, from the, you know,

you know, the eye of the storm is exactly what we need to really understand what we're, what we're experiencing. So I'm kind of, I'm a multiple minds about it. What do you think? Yeah, I am too. And I think it's just a reminder that probably the media is always simultaneously informative and exploitive. Yeah.

Those two things are going on at once, you know, even CNN, even the New York Times, whatever, you know, there is a, not to, not to, you know, dive into the Janet Malcolm territory here, but there is this, you know, exploitative, you know, hungry for, hungry for clicks, nature to what we do, even when you're doing, you know, a quote unquote worthy story. And this to me just, just highlights it, if anything, it just gets right at it. Because, you know, why are you sharing those videos? Well, you know, I just, I just want to, I just want to show what the devastation is like. okay. But, you know, there is, there is an edge to that. And, you know, it's just a fascinating question. And again, by the way, it's not just those videos either, watching some of the storm

coverage on TV today and this weekend, you know, there were a lot of people standing on the beach that had that weird, you know, weather coverage smile on their face. Like, I'm here, I'm here on the beach. I'm getting blown over a couple of inches, you know. And, you know, again, there's, there's, there's something very worthy about putting yourself in some kind of mild danger and doing that kind of stuff, but there is also something, you know, a little show-offy about it. And again, I just think I think the media is usually both things at the same time. Yeah, I think show-offy is right. I mean, I was watching a bit today with, and I guess I use bit deliberately where someone was on, I believe, was the Outer Banks in North Carolina, where the,

where the newscaster was in a raincoat and everything else or, you know, just sort of prepping for the storm. and there were people literally sunbathing on the beach, you know, I'm guessing locals who hadn't been shuffled off the island yet. But I think those scenes are, I mean, they've been, they're inherently funny. I mean, they're not, if not funny, they're inherently comedic, you know, and they're silly.

Ridiculous. Ridiculous, yeah. And I don't think that there's, yeah, I guess, I guess, especially in the face of this, of actual footage of people experiencing actual, um, you know, terror and damage and catastrophe and everything else. It's hard to really see what the purpose is

except to like you said to sort of exploit to show off whatever else. Yeah, well, you need a newspaper, right? Television exists on news pictures. So one place you go is you take the user-generated video that was of desperate people that was posted to Facebook Live. If you don't have that, you put your news man or woman on the beach and you can go to them every 30 minutes, right? It's pictures. There's no, there's no hurricane yet, uh, in Florida, but you can show your newsmen sort of being blown around lightly. That's the picture. That's what they want. You know, so and they'll, you know, when they can no longer be on the beach, they'll come inside and they'll substitute other pictures. That's just, I just think it's at some level it's TV saying, what can we, what can we put on

here? Exactly. Yeah. And that person, of course, standing on the beach doesn't have any information that a person in the studio doesn't have. Let us turn for a second to the president and his response. to the unfolding hurricane. Here he was earlier giving a briefing about the upcoming storm at FEMA headquarters. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that I've ever even heard of the category five. I knew it existed.

And I've seen some category fours. You don't even see them that much. But the category five is something that I don't know that I've ever even heard the term other than I know it's there. That's the ultimate. And that's what we have, unfortunately. reminder that the president owns a giant club in Florida,

really unfamiliar with hurricane terminology. Only the biggest hurricanes. Only the best hurricanes under my watch. Trump also tweeted that Alabama would potentially be affected by Dorian. James Spann, a Alabama meteorologist, had to come out on Twitter and say that that wasn't true and then say this because we live in the age of Trump.

I have zero interest in politics. Dorian will not affect Alabama in any way. that is not a political statement. I guess contradicting the president is inherently a political statement even when it's about hurricanes. National Weather Service also came out and backed up a span. No, Alabama would not be hit by Dorian. The president came out and then repeated the Alabama bit twice more, even attacking the media for pointing out the error. He also played a ton of golf this weekend, David.

And I usually don't try not to worry about this. stuff because then we go down the bad look slash optics rabbit hole, which makes me want to just crawl into a dark place and go away. But he is, of course, the guy, as we were reminded this week, who promised constantly that he wouldn't be playing golf and attacked Obama shamelessly for playing golf instead of being president. So that happened too. I guess there's an interesting question about when you have the president of the United

States repeating inaccurate information. Yeah. About who's going to be hit and not really knowing the terminology at stake here. Isn't there an argument that Trump is better playing golf than he is addressing the American people about the storm? I'm kidding, but I'm really not. Yeah. Would you like the president tweeting through the storm or would you just like him playing

18? I mean, I'd certainly rather. Number two. I think we'd probably all rather and be on the golf course than like, you know,

in the situation room ordering nuclear bombs dropped willy-nilly and, you know, as the storm progresses. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to make the joke that his energy

would probably, you know, if he took any, if he took eight or nine holes and tried to actually understand what was going on, the whole country might be better off. But yeah,

I think in general, you're right. Let the guy play golf and let the professionals tell us what's going on. Finally, the writer Craig Pittman on the occasion of Dorian tweeted this. This is the worst hurricane lead of all time, he calls it. It was written by the late Al Newhart, who ran Gannett newspapers and founded USA Today.

It appeared in Florida today in 1979 on the occasion of Hurricane David, Pittman, right? So you ready for this lead? Hurricane David, I keep trying to pronounce this like I pronounce. your name of the being of the podcast. Hurricane David, the first major storm named after a male acted very much like a loose woman all day Monday, dancing along Florida's East Coast and flirting dangerously with cities from Miami to Melbourne. Wow. Your analogy in a newspaper lead was to a loose woman, quote, unquote. Oh my gosh. I'm not. I feel I'm embarrassed to be associated with that naming convention.

You should be. All right, David. Time now 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. Big news from the British Parliament today. Conservative MP Philip Lee defected to the liberal Democrats. He literally walked to the Lib Dem benches and sat with them.

while Prime Minister Boris Johnson was talking. Johnson no longer has a one vote majority in the House of Commons. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. By God, it's Philip Lee. He's cashing in his money in the bank briefcase to try to save democracy. Thanks to Dr. Blumen. Of all of Bill Simmons's legacies, and there are many, making the world safe for Jim Ross jokes is really going to be right up there.

Thank him for it every day. It's hard to overstate how many people on this planet Earth make that joke. It really is that he put out there. Anyway, thanks to Dr. Blumen again for that. David, I don't know if you flipped on the TV last night, but there was some bonus Labor Day college football going on. Louisville taking on Notre Dame. Hell yeah.

And when Louisville's quarterback Joanne Pass ran the ball, it was a pretty reprehensible overworked Twitter joke to write folks. Maybe they should call him Joanne Run. thanks to Greg Fingers. That's terrible, but sometimes during a game like that, which by the way, was not incredibly excited despite turnovers on three consecutive plays at one point, the bad joke is just the joke you won.

Joanne Run. Good stuff. Finally, David, on Sunday, Pope Francis was late for Angelus in St. Peter Square in the Vatican City. The Pope explained to the crowd, I was stuck in an elevator for 25 minutes, before being rescued by firefighters. Pope was stuck in an elevator.

It was an extremely overworked Twitter joke to write firefighters. What happened to thoughts and prayers? Thanks to Tony Groves for that one. And also, by the way, thanks to Rob the Sports Grouch for sending in the pun headline, Pope Immobile.

So like, you know, the Pope Mobile. Somebody did Pope Immobile. Anyway, if you tried out the same joke template for Republican senators and as holiness. Congrats. You made the overworked

Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. Another of the presidential candidates has unofficially rebooted his campaign.

I perked up when I saw this article in McClatchie from David Katnese that we are finally experiencing the reboot a judge. Yeah. I think we called for this like three months ago. Mm-hmm.

But America's Mayor Pete Buddha judge is at 10, something of a reset. On Labor Day, his campaign is kicking off something called, and I kid you not, the peat wave, not the heat wave, the peat wave. Part of the plan is to make a bunch of hires for the upcoming primaries and caucuses. But they are also going to start, as they say in politics, drawing contrasts between Buttigieg and the other candidates.

So no more Mr. Nice Guy, or a little less Mr. Knight's guy. Yes, the mayor can throw a punch and we're ready to take on anyone, his campaign manager tells Katnese. Now, this was interesting to me because you have a guy in Buttigieg whose whole brand is built on being Mr. Nice. And now he's stuck in the polls. And so he can't be Mr. Nice anymore or he doesn't think he can be Mr. Nice anymore. So the question for him is, how do I go on the offensive without blowing all the goodwill that I've accumulated by being the smart, likable technocrat? I mean, it's a quandary. I mean, I think that most of the people watching the campaign, I can't speak for the Buttigieg heads out there.

I mean, I know that there are a lot of people who are, who feel very strongly about the man. But I feel like from where I'm sitting, the hope, the assumption, the hope, the whatever, is that he would just sort of stay true to himself. And if that doesn't place him in like, you know, the top one or two or three in the primary field, then that's fine. Then he's still in a different and more advantageous and more influential position than he was when he started, right? I mean, I, um, but you want to win, don't you? You don't, I mean, you're at this point, you're not being like, you know what if I could finish.

But isn't his candidacy based on the idea that like, it might be a smart idea if you guys voted me in less than I desperately want to be a candidate? Isn't the, isn't the, isn't the, like, the passionate desire to be to win like the antithesis of what the Buttigieg can. candidacy has been up to this point? I guess that's the problem. Right. And I and I don't know. I mean, obviously politicians want to win. So maybe I'm being too hopeful. But I mean, or I'm, you know, I'm the one with being unrealistic. But, but it's just, you know, and so like if he's having a tough time figuring out the right angle for rebooting, then I mean, that's because that's not the candidacy he's run to this point. Yeah. First of all, I'd love to see the bumper sticker. It'd be a smart idea for you guys to vote me in.

That's definitely waiting for a T-shirt. But, but, you know, I think that's the essential problem. I'd say this. I think you can do it without completely just, you know, going scarface on all the other candidates. Yeah. But, you know, it is a puzzle. I do think he really does want to be president.

And I think he believes, if you listen to him, I think that guy believes he can be president. Yeah. I don't think this is a just. just a raise my profile and get a nice cabinet post out of her become chairman of the DNC. I think he really does. I really, I think he is one of those guys who believes he could be the next president of the United States. Yeah. And he'd probably be good at it. And, you know, I mean, there's, there's reason to believe that. And we saw it with Kamala Harris, you know, when she attacked Biden and, of course, her polls have since come back down to earth. But when she

did that at, at the first debate, what was interesting about that moment was she was proving to people that she could stand up to Trump. It wasn't just about, oh, I'm going to kneecap Joe Biden, the frontrunner. I'm proving that I've got the fight that I want to be president. So I guess it's kind of coming around to what you just said. When you're willing to be a little rougher with the other Democratic candidates, you're showing donors, the media, voters, et cetera, et cetera, that you really want this. And are you going to, so it's sort of like you've got to be a little bit mean. to prove to them that you want to be president. Maybe that's it.

I think that that's all true. I don't think there's anything in the Buttigieg can to see that. I just, I think that it's, that, that would make that feasible. I think that all he's doing it, oh,

he, that he risks damaging his brand more than he does, more than he does succeed, you know, on a donor level or anything else. I mean, listen, it's a,

he's a smart guy who, who has some good ideas and, and, and, I just feel like the whole, I just feel like he's, I mean, listen, I don't know what a better course for it is, short of like hiring a sea of brilliant

writers and somehow just like turning the entire, like scripting the entire debate stage into like, you know, like having the other candidates walk backwards into like scenes from being there or something where that, you know, because that's what this is, I mean, to being their candidacy, right? I mean, he's just like to make people look, make fools of themselves and have Buttigieg just stand there with like a grin shrugging shoulders. I mean, that's the only way to really take people down and not damage the brand, right? I mean, it's a, it's like, it's, it's a, I don't know. I agree though.

I agree. He has to show some, he has to show some fight. He has to show some background. He's tried to do that though in the candidacy up to this, I mean, in his campaign up to this point. He's done that. And every time he's given a major interview, he's tried to, he's tried to look a little bit tougher than he did the day before.

And I just think it's a more, I think it's more of like a primal shift than, than, then I would say, he or most candidates. are willing to admit, you know? I mean, it's that you can say you're, you can say you're rebooting over and over again. Um, I don't know that just like a McClachey article is enough, you know, signal that this, this is going to change. I think he's either, I think we, we have to see a much, we have to, we have to, I mean, I think on some level he has to acknowledge it publicly that, that more is needed of, I mean, that more is needed of his candidacy and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, make the, make the, make the, make the, make the, make the, make the, make the

reboot the narrative. I mean, that's the only way, I think. Yeah, I think part of these reboot articles is your telegraph, you go to the media and you're sort of telegraphing to the rest of the media that you're about to do something or they should pay attention to you again. Because he's had the unique problem that everybody was interviewing him and profiling him in an early stage in the campaign because he was likable and popular and also he was giving tons of interviews. But now people are paying less attention because his poll numbers are stuck. So you go and give interviews like this or you do a piece like this because you want to tell the Washington Post in the New York Times, hey, heads up. I'm about to pay attention to me again. Over here.

He also does, to your point, let me just change metaphors a little bit from being there. Buttigieg feels like he'd be more successful in the Aaron Sorkin TV show about this campaign. That's what I'm getting at. Okay. Maybe Aaron Sorkin would have been the best. Exactly. than the actual campaign, right? He feels like the hero of that. You know, he's just, he just wants common sense solutions. He's a mayor. He's not a creature of Washington, David.

He's Dave. He's like the presidentrycanan lookalike. It was just like, wait, can't I just see through all this madness? Yeah, I mean, that's it. Yeah, if I could just bring people together and get some common sense solutions. And young, right? Yeah. He's, he's like the, he's like the guy who gets elected.

He's the Jimmy Smith's guy in the Aaron Sorkin thing, right? He's not the old president. He's the young up and comer. No, I like this. He either needs Aaron Sorkin to be his speechwriter or just to write the campaign for everyone, but probably the latter. Have this down.

David is bed bug redux. Oh, no. If you're not on media Twitter, and God bless you if you're not, this is the quick backstory. The New York Times got a bedbug infestation last week. George Washington professor named Dave Carve joked on Twitter that much loathed

columnist Brett Stevens was in fact a bed bug. Stevens found the tweet and seemed to use his position as the Times columnist to get Karp in trouble at work. Dave Karpf exposed said effort. Much dunking ensued. And then deep breath, Stevens wrote a column published this last Friday night, not naming Karp,

but drawing parallels between Twitter today and the Nazis use of radio during World War too. Stevens writes, watching Warsaw's Jewish ghetto burn, a Polish anti-Semite was overheard saying the bedbugs are on fire. The Germans are doing a great job. So Brett Stevens has taken a

gag tweet. He has abused the power of his position. And now because he looked dumb, he is ratcheting up this into an indirect charge of anti-Semitism. how silly and awful and lame is this.

Oh, is that a question for me? That's very, yeah, my answer is very, very silly and very awful and very lame. Okay, let's move on. I know, I need, I just want to admit that I, that I was,

I was totally off the grid this weekend for the first time in a long time. And I, and I, and I surfaced, yeah, I surfaced, you know, at a, like a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, antique store where there was suddenly I suddenly had cell phone signals and I and I saw your email and you and I just saw that it said I saw that it said bed bugs redux and then like something in parenthetical like holy crap and and I just was like for the next then I lost service and for the next two hours

it was just left to wonder what Brett Stevens had done like I was like did Brett Stevens get fired that Brett Stevens just say something even more crazy um this was not what I was expecting and my maybe it should have been the leader in the clubhouse but In some ways, this is even, this is maybe the wildest part of the story. I mean, I just can't, I, I just can't imagine the thought process that, listen, I guess I imagine, it's easy to see why Brett Stevens wrote this piece. I mean, after everything he's done so far. It's, it's interesting that he wasn't humbled at all by the response by the, that is previous, that the previous interaction got. And maybe it should be surprising that he wasn't humbled by the fact that a man of, of the purported stature that could,

get somebody fired with a single, you know, email could only secure like a midday MSNBC spot to defend himself. He wasn't humbled at all, so he wrote this piece. That's fine. I mean, that's to be expected. But that the New York Times was happy to publish it is sort of galling. I mean, I don't, I mean, I guess it's not that big a deal in the, in the grand scheme of things, but to, I guess, I guess here's the thing.

he alluded to totalitarianism or echoes of totalitarianism when he was on MSNBC. He might have said that in a separate time. I don't think you're allowed to hurl. I think for someone who's so concerned about the implications of calling someone a bedbug, of just the insinuations, the things that are lurking underneath the surface, I don't think you're allowed to hurl charges of anti-Semitism without saying that was an anti-Semitic comment, sir, Mr. Carp. yes you should just kind of come out and say if you if that's how you really feel if you want to go down that road the direct route is the way you should go and the new york times backing that up is like i mean that none of this is totalitarianism none of this is totalitarianism let me make that really clear oh yeah it's ludicrous but but but the idea that there's an institution as powerful as the new york times it's just going to bat for him in this case when he is like already patently in the wrong that's that's a little that's a little bit frightening i would think it i would think that an outfit like the New York Times in an era where like more and more people think that they're fake news

and think that they're unbelievably biased would be like concerned about the appearance of such things. Going to bad for a sub tweet is a bad idea. Yeah. That's really bad. Like I said, if you want to make this charge, then just go ahead and make it. But say, that's a thing. I don't think he can make this charge because I think he, I don't think he believes it.

But I think he can hand wave about how the idea of someone saying this at some point in history has an unsavory echo blah, blah, blah, blah. But I don't think he can't. And, you know, by the way, if he had made the charge directly, does that get into the New York Times? I don't think so.

I just don't know why the New York Times is running their editorial page, like a late 90satlantic.com blog. Like, you don't just get to respond at length to everything that's on your mind. You know, I mean, it's just even when you're pissy, you don't necessarily get to put that into print. It's fine.

Just like, you let it go. This is the paper record, you know? Can't the column, just kind of do whatever. I think the problem is the columnist can kind of do whatever they want. Yeah. And we sort of, and what happens is the time sort of relies on them to be like,

okay, I had, you know, I wrote about something weird today. Tomorrow I'm going to write about, uh, Trump or I'm going to just go, I'm back to basics.

But if you allow yourself like Brett Stevens to be driven to distraction by a tweet that had no retweets, why wouldn't you use your New York Times column on this? You're right. I mean, I know he did it. Come on. Yeah,

but you're right. There's some, I think that's always been, I think that's been, you know, the strength and the weakness of, of, you know, editorial pages, op-ed pages, is that they give these people broad latitude. And sometimes that results in some really some great columns that an editor would really never assign. The bad news is you get stuff like this. And you're just like, what is this? You know, and the Times has had plenty of those. Remember when Bill Sapphire way back when was constantly tweeting that Wesley Clark was running for president of the

stalking horse for Hillary Clinton. He would just say that every day. And it would just turn out to be completely false. Yeah. It's like, okay. Well, that got in the paper too. By the way, Alex Perrine was doing a search for someone who was defending Brett Stevens. The first time around, the winner of that contest, the second time around is Ted Cruz. He tweeted on his behalf, Brett Stevens always displays civility and decency.

He treats people with respect and engages on. substance. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, that. Anyway, congratulations to Ted Cruz for winning that. I got this one in my email from you, David. Loving Dave Chappelle to own the lives. Dave Chappelle released a Netflix comedy special on August 26th that pissed off a lot of people with jokes about transgender people and Michael Jackson's accusers.

And David, you noticed something pretty amazing on Twitter. What was it? There is a, suddenly there was a. a strange appearance, maybe an unexpected appearance, from what I would consider the kind of the farthest right reaches of the Twitterverse who were coming out in support of Dave Chappelle. I mean, and let's be clear, there were a lot of voices, and I believe at least one on the ringer.com,

who were coming from the other end of the political spectrum, who were not very high on Dave Chappelle's latest routine, where he sort of attacked a lot of, woke stalking horses, I guess, would be the way to put it. And the response from the conservative sphere seemed to be, finally someone is sticking up for free speech in this era where the libs are trying to destroy it. Did that sound about it right? That is.

I just kind of been stunned silence. The first thing that popped up, I mean, thanks to my, our coworker, Andrew Gradadadero, was a tweet from Dana Loche who said, Dave Chappelle's Sixth and Stones was hilarious glad someone is sticking it to the cancel culture and encouraging people to laugh again hang loose emoji. What is that? Or hook him horns emoji?

And then not to be outdone. Breitbart actually had John Nulte. It's a I don't even know how to describe John Nulte to someone who's not familiar with him. It's the guy with the Al Bundy avatar, right? Right. He's sort of a professional

Al Bundy who doesn't, who kind of thought that married with children was a documentary or something. Like that, he was a, he's a strange character. But he does, I think, consider himself a connoisseur of humor. And often, I mean, a purveyor of it, he would consider himself one at least. And he watched and reviewed it and this special and was, I think, taken with it. And I think that there was a, you know, Dave Chappelle in these same quarters, I think had a lot of had a very negative, they had a very negative opinion of Chappelle for a long time, probably without engaging with him very much. And so there's a little bit of a come to Jesus,

like, you know, my eyes have finally been open to his humor because he's an incredibly funny guy. But he closes the piece. This is John Nolte. He closes with the piece by saying, our society desperately needs a free speech revolution. And if the Obama-loving Chappelle and the Christian mocking Jervais, is Ricky Jervase, is what he was talking to,

want to lead it. I'll follow them straight to hell. Whoa. Just so I have the tenets of the vast right-wing conspiracy straight, they are in favor of supporting Dave Chappelle's right to say anything he wants to, no matter how impolitic. Yes, I mean, there's a lot of stuff about Michael Jackson in this. There was stuff about, what was it?

I mean, there's a lot of stuff that, you know, I'm not supposed to say this. There was specifically, there was a specific riff about him on the Chappelle show trying to say the F word over and over again and then refusing him saying that. So there are literal words that he says he, you know, that he's speaking in defense of being able to say out loud. And those aren't exactly words that I think anybody would be like clamoring to scream at the top of their lungs. But go ahead. Okay. So we're defending Dave Chappelle's right to make jokes about charges of pedophilia and LGBTQ humor. but at the same time

we are digging up bad tweets of journalists that they made in college and using them to drive and using it to drive them out of the business. I just want to make sure I have everything straight.

Those two things are happening at the same time because it is bright. Bright Bart was doing the latter. So both those things are happening on Brightbart right now. Yeah. I mean,

I think that you should never mistake a flailing a flailing website. or a political strategy, you know, political strategy for like some sort of philosophy. But yeah, those two things are happening at the same time. Okay. Just want to make sure. Yeah.

Dave Chappelle, conservative hero. All right. Ooh, here we go, David. I don't do this very often. But every once in a while, I like to climb to the peak of Mount journalism to make a statement about the profession. Last time I put on the crampons and picked up the ice axe. I was complaining about journalists who changed jobs.

in two installments. They say goodbye to the old job in one tweet, and then in a separate tweet, they announced their new job. I'll have more to tell you in just a few days. This is my new complaint here from the top of Mount Journalism. And this is not a sub tweet of a particular person. It's a sub tweet of everybody.

Which is, why do reporters celebrate the anniversaries of the publication of their stories? Have you noticed this? Yeah. Two years ago today, I published a profile of so-and-so. Eight years ago today,

I published this or that. And my first question was, how the hell do they know what happened? And I was asking around about this over the weekend. I think the answer is they put the piece on Facebook originally. And Facebook is sending them one of those anniversary things. Because do you have any idea what you did three years ago or five years ago? Just off, I mean, don't you have any clue? No, right?

but here's the complaint you journalist i only know from the internet i don't care about your birthday okay i really don't care i truly and sincerely don't care about your article's birthday i that is that is i i just i cannot if you want if you want to just shamelessly dredge up a a years old piece of journalism just just do it no need to wait for the peg i i think it's just, I think it's just fine. You can just do that at any time. And by the way, if you'd like to celebrate your pieces, anniversaries, you also have to do the bad ones. Okay. Two years ago today, I published this half-hearted column that my boss has made me right. And I was embarrassed to even tweet it at the time. But here it is when your anniversary. Happy birthday. Thank you very much.

That's all I have. I'm coming down. Yeah. Very good. Back down the. Back down the the slopes of Mount Journalism. Pieces have birthdays. We're celebrating the birthday of a piece of journalism. An anniversary, you might say. We just did the moon landing, right? We did the Apollo thing. Now we're doing the piece I published.

It's just great stuff. All right, David, would you like to listen to a little Stuart Varney before we finish up today? Oh, God, yes, always. Here is the host of the Fox Business Network's Varnie and Company interviewing presidential candidate Joe Walsh about whether Donald

Trump deserves to be called a liar. Stuart, do you believe this president lies? No. You don't believe he's ever lied? He exaggerates and spins. Okay, do you believe he's ever told the American people a lie? No.

Okay. That's it. That's it. Oh, my God. So, do we think Stuart Varney would agree to the general idea that everybody lies or most everybody lies at some time or another. But he is insisting that Trump does not lie or has never lied as president.

Yeah, maybe he thinks, maybe he thinks that everybody lies. Maybe he has a much stricter definition of lie that no one really else, that no one shares, but maybe he just has a very, very narrow definition of what that means. I don't know. It's best not to parse these sort of ravings and then just appreciate them for the humor that they give us.

When I was watching it, I realized I knew very little about Stuart Varney. Oh, man. I kind of assumed he'd written a column for 20 years for a Murdoch paper in London or maybe somewhere else

and then found his way to Fox News. But I didn't realize he had such a huge run at CNN. Mm-hmm. Including a stint of hosting Money Line with Willow Bay what a moment in media time that was. He's been at Fox for 15 years. The only thing I have to say is

Fox business is kind of underrated bad. Oh, yeah. It almost seems like a pure distillation of the Fox id. There's just stock quotes running across the screen at the bottom. Like it's just minute to minute, it might actually be worse than Fox News. I think it is. I think that's true.

We just sort of forget it. It gets a little more obscure. Everybody forgets it. That's sort of the point. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, that makes it even more insidious, right? It just gets the toilet anonymity under the guise of, I mean, we talk about the parts of Fox News that are real news vis-a-vis their opinion commentators or whatever. But this is like, this is all has the sheen of financial news. Like, what could be more unbiased than that? This is numbers, right? These are numbers guys telling you that your former president is a, you know, a Kenyan secret agent or something. And I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a that's a, that's a that's a, that's a that's a, that's a that's a, that's a that's a, that's a's a, that's a's a's a, that's a's a, that's a's a's a big. deal. Time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun

headline. Oh, God. Okay. By the way, we still got a storehouse of these things. So if you want to do, if we want to do an all

headline edition, maybe we'll do that in the holidays. I really got a like a 20 of these. Every week, it's just, it's incredible. Friday's winner was these marsupials go out with a bang.

And this from Scott Caswell, David, is going to keep us in the world of animals. yet again, lots of animals stories. All right. I'm okay with that. Bring out the puns.

It's from the Canadian broadcasting company's Saskatoon Division, not just the Canadian brought, not just the CBC, the Saskatoon Division. Seems that back in the 70s, David, there was an animal at the,

at a Saskatoon Zoo that was labeled a dingo. And the writer Alicia Bridges reports that, in fact, it was not a dingo. It was a hingo. It was a hybrid of a dingo, a Labrador, and a coyote. It was falsely labeled.

When was this in the zoo? When was this in the zoo? It was in the 70s. We're just correcting the record here. I mean, I guess that doesn't seem like it's that long ago, but this is, I know a lot of people that, like, you know, in small towns, you'd be like, that guy owns a wolf. And, like, there was no, like, blood test for that. It could have just been, like, it was just a big, muddy,

dog with pointy ears or whatever. You know, I mean, like, it was a German shepherd with, like, a gray coat. But, like, it seems weird that they wouldn't be doing the sort of blood testing at the zoo. Yeah. Is this like a wheels off sort of zoo? Like, is this, I mean, no. I think the occasion is there are two new dingoes in from Australia. That's okay.

That have just arrived. So I think we're kind of establishing that these are the first genuine dingoes at the Saskatchez. Oh, okay. I mean, is that caused to sell? I don't really, I don't want to shit on the Saskatoon Zoo more than I have to, but like, I feel like you can get it dingo. Like, is that, is that?

Well, they may have out of other priorities. Okay, you're right, all right. So always celebrate your local zoo, though. That's cool. Yeah, do you, do you, have you gone to the zoo in your life looking for a dingo? Where are the dingoes? No. That's not my first thing.

I mean, and in their defense, if they, if there was like, I mean, a Labrador, I think I could identify. But if they had a couple of coyotes back there and they're like, those are dingoes. I'd probably be like, okay. That's, I, I, I, so what, what's the question here? The takeaway here. Can I just, can I just direct you away from any puns about the movie, a cry in the dark, the dingo ate my baby thing? Yeah.

It is not, it is not, it is not dingo related at all. I'm sorry, we went down dingo Boulevard here. It's about a mistake being caused because there was a dog in this animal's ancestry. A dog in the animal's ancestry. What is the CBC's strained pun headline? I mean, it feels like this is like it's not like all bark and no bite or something doesn't make sense. That's pretty good though. Um, it's not about, is it Labrador specific or just dog?

Just dog, just general dog. Just general animal. I've got some dog in this fight. Doggone it. Doggone it. What do dogs walk on? I was just getting the body parts. Pause.

Hmm. Hitting paws. Paa. God. You made a mistake. You made a blunder. Er. As we would say in French,

you made a... Fopause? Oh, God, faux pao. Oh, no, I didn't even get that when I said it. Does that read on the printed page? That's a great pun. It actually is, right? Fopaw.

Faw. Yeah, but I don't know that I would immediately see that and go to like the P.A. I don't know. I'm so trained. But that's faux pa is a great. That's fantastic. Good work, CBC Saskatoon. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris. made a production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Friday, bright and early, with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. David.

He's Dave. You, journalist I only know from the internet. I don't care about your birthday, okay? I really don't care. Wow. I was stuck in an elevator for 25 minutes. Talk about it out of his heat. What do you make of that problem?

Last time I put on the cramping. bonds and picked up the ice axe before being rescued by firefighters. How the hell do they know? I mean, it's a quandary. What do you make of that? I'll follow them straight to hell. Whoa. I think that that's all true.

Do you have any idea what you did? Mistake a professional Al Bundy. What do you make of that conundrum? I don't think you're a lot of. allowed to hurl. Look at you. I was totally off the grid this weekend for the first time in a long time, and I surfaced. How silly and awful and lame is this?

Oh, is that a question for me? That's very, I can answer it. Yeah, yeah. You don't just get to respond at length to everything that's on your mind, you know? I mean, it's just even when you're pissy, it's fine, just like you let it go. Okay. Just want to make sure. Yeah.

No more Mr. Nice Guy, or a little less Mr. Knight's guy. Only the best hurricanes under my watch. Okay.