The Press Box - Impeachment Eve, One-Term Biden, and Listener Mail | The Press Box

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the way we consume impeachment news now vs. during the Clinton presidency (4:07), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (18:42), updates on Olivia Wilde’s comments regarding female reporter stereotypes (32:06), and more. Hosts: Bryan Curtis, David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. As the year comes to a close, our staff is writing about our favorite sports moments of 2019. Jason Concepcion explains the year in 10 pieces of pop culture, and we break down the last 10 years of the Marvel Universe. Also, ahead of the new Star Wars movie coming out next week, the staff's discussing Baby Yoda, rise of Skywalker romances, and what the resistance will do if they win. You can check this all out on the ringer.com. David, Washington, D.C.'s new Museum is set to close at the end of December.

What I want to know is you co-host a media podcast. Did you ever have any desire to visit the museum? Oh, man. I am sure that at some point there was a journalist book launch party that I would have been like minorly envious of attending there. but I wasn't in the DC area. Seriously, isn't that the biggest loss here? Like, where are all of the DC Journows going to have their book launch parties now? Politics and pros.

Did they ever even go to the museum? Yeah, well, that's the only time I ever heard of it. I'm sure there was, you know, I'm sure there's like a Chris Matthews panel discussion or two over the years or something. I have no idea. I have no idea. I just remember the existence of the, D.C. museums are wonderful places to have book events. That's all I really know. Like, I'm sure the spy museum is super cool,

but I'm only familiar with the spy museum in reference to, like, people having book parties there. Yeah, or the Museum of Sex. You know, you just hear about it, but you'd never actually visit. I would think you'd have to get to, like, the Doris Kearns-Goodwin level of fame to even rent the museum for your book party.

Also, I was just looking at their Twitter account, and this is definitely not a funny, this is definitely not a funny subject. but just it's so it is a little weird to think of trying to program the museum. Like what the hell do you do in a, in a museum that's about the media? And like, join us December 14th as we screen freelancers,

Mexico. Like that's, that's the film. And again, that, not making fun of people who report under terrible circumstances, things like that, but like freelancers Mexico.

This is at the museum. I don't know what's going out here. hear the Omni Max of Media Podcast. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. You've got Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots and lots to get to today. We'll talk about Joe Biden's pledge to be a one-term president.

We'll talk about Donald Trump, Greta Thunberg, and Time Magazine's Person of the Year. We'll talk a little Brexit reaction, a nice steaming batch of listener mail, plus the overwork Twitter joke of the week. But David, we've got to begin with the latest from impeachment. because we're finally nearing the finish line. On Friday morning, the House Judiciary Committee recommended two articles of impeachment

pertaining to abuse of power and obstruction of justice to the full House. Too long didn't read. Next week, Donald Trump will become the third American president to be impeached, barring asteroid hitting the Earth. Here's Trump's reaction to this morning's developments. And so I was actually doing the finals, but I got to see enough of it, and certainly I spoke to my people. It's a witch hunt. It's a sham. It's a hoax.

Nothing was done wrong. Zero was done wrong. I think it's a horrible thing to be using the tool of impeachment, which is supposed to be used in an emergency, and it would seem many, many, many years apart to be using this for a perfect phone call where the president of that country said there was no pressure whatsoever. It didn't even know what we were talking about.

Richard President Mario Abdo of Paraguay who was sitting next to Trump during those remarks. Our thoughts and prayers to President Obdo. David, there was a little politicking within the House Judiciary Committee about when

they would do their thing. Quoting here from the New York Times, Representative Gerald Nadler, the chairman of the committee, abruptly paused the session late Thursday night before bringing the articles to a final vote saying he wanted members to take the time to quote, searched their consciences before the historic roll call.

After Republicans had dragged out the debate for hours, Democrats said they did not want such a consequential vote to occur in the dark of night when the American public was unlikely to be watching. Now, did the Democrats mean dark of night in the back room smoke-filled room, Washington since? Or did they mean dark of night after Brian Williams? had signed off of MSNBC. Well, I think Brian Williams would have been happy to stick around for all hours as late as it would take.

But yeah, I mean, it was, at some point it began to feel like more of a little, you know, slap fight where the Democrats decided to delay the formal vote until the next day, specifically because the Republicans were so determined to drag it out until the midnight hour, the literal midnight hour. I'm not sure. I mean, I know these proceedings have actually been, there's some, I've heard people say that they're doing good ratings that people are paying attention to this stuff. But it just, it's a little bit mind boggling in 2019 to think that the time of day that the impeachment vote happened or the article, the vote that this vote happened would be particularly meaningful to our digestion of it. I don't know. Is it, I mean, is it, do you think it, do you think it's significant at all? No, because I think we're now used to news just arriving at all times on our phone. I can't imagine this would have any impact outside of in the midnight hour, which you just referenced being like the bumper music either on Brian Williams' show or Joe Scarborough's in the morning. Like, I don't know that your average American is going to process it. Speaking of processing impeachment, a couple pieces about the way this has been covered. especially about the urgency with which this has been covered.

We talked a little bit about this Tuesday. I kind of wanted to come back around to this discussion. This is Michael Calderon and Politico. He says the recent flurry of editorials about impeachment hasn't come close to the level two decades ago when more than 115 newspaper boards called for President Bill Clinton's resignation after the release of Independent Counsel Ken Starr's report. Outlets in regions with more conservative electorates, some of which have attracted attention in 2016 by backing Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump

have weighed in far more tentatively. That's a sign that the House impeachment hearings have yet to generate much of a groundswell for Trump's removal from office. But nor has there been any indication that editorial boards are embracing his claim that the hearings are a hoax or a coup. In a semi-related point on Wednesday, Oliver Darcy of CNN noted, none of the network newscasts had impeachment in their top three stories. So this is two days before those articles are recommended to the full house. They didn't even have, it didn't make the top three. I don't know.

I've been thinking, yeah, I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days just since we talked about it. And I'm almost, isn't the reason here that Americans just digest news so much more efficiently than they ever have and that there's just so much more. more news out here. And these kind of metrics, both very old media metrics, right? As old as you could get, your nightly network newscast and your editorial board of your local newspaper. Isn't it just, we just don't need those places anymore to give us the high sign that something important is happening? Yeah, I mean, for sure, that's a big part of it. It would be interesting

to see what they led, you know, what the newscast led with, you know, instead of impeachment. but I think, you know, we've talked a lot about the sort of steady creep of how this, I mean, of this story unfolding, which, you know, has had effects in both directions. But I think with all the, we talked last week about whether or not the Democrats were, you know, about this, this idea that they're moving slowly or moving quickly or whatever else. I think that all of that is sort of irrelevant just because whatever's happened in the past, it's impossible to, you know, to impose like the timelines of previous impeachment proceedings on, you're right, on how we digest news in 2019. Like, it just, it's, like, the whole thing has been, I mean, we've, we've digested the whole thing in such a weird way that it just seems like it's been, the same thing has been going on forever. And when news breaks, it does not feel particularly newsworthy, which I think is really

problematic, especially at times like this when something, you know, historic is actually happening. Yeah, there's no way for, it's much harder any way for media to signal that this is something important you should pay attention to versus the emergency. And look, that's probably partially like the cable networks fault, right?

They were the ones that had breaking with a big red, you know, wrapper around the screen every time something happened during the presidential election. Countdown clocks and everything else. Yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah. And now it's the fucking impeachment of president. and you don't have any place to go.

There's no other color to put on the screen. Right. I was just thinking you were talking about putting it over the timeline of past impeachmentments. I was thinking about this too because you and I, here's our old man portion of the podcast, which is obligatory, were in college when Bill Clinton was impeached. Mm-hmm. And thinking about the media, you know, atmosphere at that point, whatever you want to call it, it's like most Americans read a couple of news articles a day.

about impeachment in their local newspaper. Not the New York Times and Washington Post, their local newspaper. You had television, but cable news was really still in its infancy. MSNBC was only founded in 1996, two years before impeachment. And if you were really a news hound,

you could get on your dial-up internet and, you know, look up the times or look up other articles and, you know, whatever you could find out there. But there just wasn't, much at all. And you compare that to like the maximum amount you could get in 1998 is the kind of thing you could now get in about five minutes digest. So that just again,

when we talk about like the gravity of impeachment, the importance of impeachment, where it should rank in our mental power rankings of news. It's like, I just think that changes the equation completely. And 1998 seemed like a much bigger deal than this does today. Well, I mean, I don't know. I don't, I mean, I honestly don't know where this lies in, in terms of the, you know, the argument. But, but I think we've probably said before in this podcast that when, when the Kinstar report came out, both of our college computer labs were completely shut down by people just printing out this like, everybody wanted their own ream of paper with this, with the star report on it. And part of the,

that is just, you know, whatever. It's like, oh, we got, we have, we have free access to printer, so we're just going to run wild. But, but back then, I mean, you really did have to wait for the nightly news or the paper the next day to synthesize what was going on. And if you, no one, no one, no one printed that Star Report out and read it, but the, but the intention, or at least no one, I'm sure no one at the Baylor University Library did. Um, but, but the intention, obviously is that like, I, this is an important thing that I want to understand and I don't have time to wait for the newspaper tomorrow, right? I mean, like, I want to understand it right away.

Now, you don't need to engage, I mean, you don't need to wait for a newspaper or a nightly newscast. You just find the blog that you, like, agree with, and they've already synthesized it for you before you'd even have a chance to print it out, right? So, I mean, we, I think the synthesis, like you're saying, just happens just much more quickly. And the public as a whole is, you know, if not better informed, certainly like more informed in terms of volume before, you know, in a much more. expedient way. When you started that sentence, we now have free access to. And you're talking about the Star Report. I did not know you were necessarily going to go with printers there. So I just, F way I. David also want to talk to you about one term Joe Biden. Politico's Ryan Lizza, who has pulled some really interesting stories about Biden out of Biden world this cycle,

had a piece this week about the former V floating the idea that if elected, he would only serve one term as president. Now, floating may be kind of an inexact word because according to Lizza, Biden is hinting this to his advisors, but doesn't want to make a public pledge because that would turn him into an instant lame duck. Biden thinks, or people around Biden think this, maybe this would help him with younger voters. One advisor tells Lizza, he's going

into this thinking, I want to find a running mate. I can turn things over to after four years. But if that's not possible or doesn't happen, then I'll run for re-election. But he's not going to publicly make a one-term pledge. Team Biden had all the usual denials. My first reaction to this is this feels sort of desperate. It feels like Ted Cruz makes Carly Fiorina his running mate desperate over that moment. What do you think of the one-term Biden idea?

I mean, I think desperate's the right. is there is is you know says about what I was thinking about it it. It just seems really weird. Now I know that they, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure that they wanted this news to get out there judging by their, you know, immediate denial of the story. It seemed, I mean, it would be, but the idea of floating this to help with young voters, I think is just idiotic. I mean, just so wrongheaded, you know, I mean, this, this concept has never worked before.

I mean, it would only, it would seems like only in the case of, you know, a real like national emergency, would it work? And only, and then only if you, I mean, implicit in that pledge is the acknowledgement that you're probably too old to be doing the job, right? I mean, I just don't understand how, I don't understand what the difference is between, you know, barring some, like the onset of some tragic illness or something like that. I don't understand what the, what the distinction is between, you know, month 48 and month 49, right? I mean, that's really what it comes down to, is that you're just, like, claiming that you're not. not going to be up to the job by the time the term is over, which just seems like a really bad

platform for someone who's, you know, already who this question, you know, the question of age is already an issue. It just seems like you're kind of like instead of remedying that question, instead of answering it in a positive way, you're sort of, you're just giving it more oxygen, you know? I mean, it just seems really weird. You'd say, yeah, it's kind of an admission that you're old now. Right. And that maybe you're too old to be president now. The timing is weird because I think you and I both agree over the last few weeks, it started to seem a lot more likely that Joe Biden is actually going to be the nominee. And that's, you know, a pretty decent bet right now.

It's not a guarantee, you know, there's a path for Elizabeth Warren. There's a path for Bernie. There's a path for a lot of people. But it doesn't seem like that. You know, if Joe Biden wins Iowa, he's probably going to be the nominee. If he loses Iowa, New Hampshire, he still has a pretty good chance. And I just think, so it's not like you feel like you really need the Hail Mary at this point. The other part of this is like the just the meta part of getting this.

How do you do this? So you're not going to publicly come out and say you're going to be a one-term president, but you're going to privately say it so that young voters who are unenthused about a Joe Biden presidency will be, you know, assuaged in some way. but then you never actually say, I mean, that just feels like a bank shot that I don't even understand how that works. Yeah, and the thing about, no, no, I mean,

because it gives, I mean, it gives, the way they've done it to this point, it's an open platform for anyone who is anti-Biden. And, I mean, I definitely am including Democratic primary voters in that group to say, if you can't do two terms, you shouldn't be running for one, right?

Whether or not you actually are, I mean, whether or not it's true, you know, I mean, you're giving people the platform to kind of attack you, and you don't really get any of the benefit from it. And I don't even know what the benefit would be. I mean, this idea that, like, he's going to find someone to turn the reins over to. Well, first of all, if you don't find someone to turn the reins over to, then, like, and he's decided to run again. Well, then, I mean, that's, he's a, it's like, it's like, it's, it's like, it's like, it's like, you're doubling down on this

dumb decision, right? That you're like, the acknowledgement that you're too old to do it in four years, and then, like, oh, but I guess I'll have to do it. But then, and then if he does find somebody, or just the idea that he wants to find somebody. Sounds a whole lot like Trump saying he's going to hire all the best people. You know, I mean, the idea that like, we like Joe Biden above all should be trusted to find the next Joe Biden. I mean, it just all seems sort of just wrongheaded. I don't know.

I mean, it's just a bad idea. Finally, this tweet, David, from NBC's Benji Sarlane, I thought you would enjoy this. He writes, fun fact, a one-term pledge is the first of three rituals that summon a 500-foot-tall Aaron Sorkin from the ancient depths who destroys the universe. The other two pledges are a broken convention and a bipartisan national ticket. I also saw the joke a lot.

It's like, when is, when is Biden going to float the idea that he may pick Condi Rice as his vice president? That really is the script here, right? Picking Condi, I'm a one-termer broker convention. Let's go all the way. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to At the Press Box Pod, where they are always gratefully received. David Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Great Britain and the Conservatives won a smashing victory in the parliamentary elections yesterday. They won 48 more seats than they did in the election two years ago. It's the biggest Tory victory since the high Thatcher period. In the closing days of the race,

we saw this Washington Post headline, Quote, Boris Johnson accused of hiding in fridge in order to avoid interview with Piers Morgan. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. It's the most relatable thing I've ever heard about Boris Johnson. No matter what you think of his victory. News David from the Wall Street Journal, the online luggage startup, away. Oh, yeah. Away is the name of this company.

He says their CEO is stepping down. would you believe there were a lot of both away and luggage puns in the replies of that tweet? She needed to pack her bag and go. Sounds good to me. T-U-M-I-2-me. Oh, no. You'll think she'll find as good a roll aboard another company. Oh, my God.

And this was some pleasingly inside baseball. My favorite barbecue sauce is Sweet Baby Away. ways. Thanks to Aaron Schaefer. All right. For sending that along. And finally, speaking of pals,

our pal Scott Tobias sends along this headline, Disney CEO Bob Iger, arranging meeting with Martin Scorsese after nasty Marvel comments. Aranging a meeting. Lots of funny references to the Irishman's meeting between Jimmy Hoffa and Tony Pro.

Remember that in Miami in the movie? It was an overall. a Twitter joke to write Iger better not show up wearing shorts. Thanks to Scott for that. If you thought a Hollywood Peace Summit was as fraught as a 70s Teamsters Peace Summit, imagine that. Congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And let us get into the case of Greta Thunberg in time. This week, the 16-year-old climate activist was named Times Person of the Year. Donald Trump ignored this fact or took it with a sense.

of Zen detachment. Ha ha, just kidding. He tweeted, so ridiculous. Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to an old-fashioned movie with a friend.

Chill, Greta, chill. I have two reactions. A good old-fashioned movie? Hmm. Is she going to buy a box of milk duds and watch Carrie Grant do his thing at the Nickelodeon? That's so bizarre.

Number two reactions. is that Trump was replying to a tweet from actress Roma Downey Yes, Roma Downey of the old show Touched by an Angel So he didn't just come upon this news It was in his feed because he follows Roma Downey? I don't know. The mind reels.

No, she's Mark Burnett's wife. Oh, that's what it is. That's what it is. Okay. I only know this from photo research. That's it. I'm sure he's on his very short follow list. But Roma Downey, was saluting Greta Thunberg, by the way.

Oh, really? Yeah. That must be what pissed him off. You're going to be shocked to know that Romodownie was not roasting a 16-year-old climate activist. Just about everyone on Twitter noted that we're just days away from someone making a joke, a very mild joke about Baron Trump's name, and the White House taking great and extremely fake exception to that.

Now Trump is directly trolling a 16-year-old on Twitter. Holly Figueroa O'Reilly of the Wapo and the Guardian says on Twitter, nothing like going after a young girl with Asperger syndrome to drive home the point that you are fit for office.

I also want to bring this up, David. No offense to Time magazine. But isn't it true that Trump cares more about time than any sentient news consumer on this planet? Yes. We talk about like, you know,

the Trump bump that all these news organizations are getting. won't times be the biggest Trump bump because there's just no chance that who is ever as president after Donald Trump well maybe Joe Biden Joe Biden might get to like 25% of

as much as Trump cares about time but there's no chance that anybody becomes president after Trump will care dearly as much about time I mean I guess it goes hand in hand with a lot of his sort of old fashioned tendencies everything down to like you know making all his notes in Sharpie on pieces of paper or on magazine

or on newspaper articles but Trump obviously cares deeply about Time magazine. He famously had the fake time cover hanging in his golf clubs with himself on the front. Apparently on the campaign trail, I mean, lately, I mean, in, you know, his big public appearances, he talks about being the potential of being the time man of the year, a person of the year, and kind of joking about how it used to be man and now it's person and my how things have changed. he's obsessed with it. All the way down to, I mean,

this is totally a sidebar, but that former White House staffer Mina Chang, who turned out to be a fraudster, had her own Time Magazine cover, which is fantastic. She really knew how to ingratiate herself to the president. But yeah, I mean, it's so,

it's just so transparent, you know? And, I mean, obviously he's gone after Greta Thunberg in, like, truly just, like, inappropriate, offensive ways before. this, but it's just weird that he treat, that he's treating her in the kind of, you know, anger management with all these, you know, all this stuff. It's like he's trying to caricature her in the same way that he does as political opponents. And all it really is doing, I mean, talking about the Trump bump, all it's doing is like serving to make it look like she is going toe to toe with the president of the United States, right? I mean, that he's, that he is, that he is, that's it. I mean, he's giving her so, he's, he's giving her all this attention. And, um, Yeah, I mean, Time Magazine is certainly going to benefit from this. I mean, you know, one of these years is just not going to be a time person of the year. At least there won't be a print magazine to go out and buy on the newsstand after it's announced.

And this is, you know, a huge boon to a, you know, print magazine in a kind of floundering industry. This is like the fountain of youth for time. It's like how many years has Trump injected into the time person of the year just by caring who it is? like how many people in the world were speculating or worrying about who that was going to be besides Donald Trump. But hey, he's president. So do you remember when we used to go to six flags in high school? And they would have like the photo booth where they would put your picture on a fake time cover or like fortune or something like that. And it was it was really of a piece with like the giant draft you could hypothetically win or the cool monogram Dallas Mavericks.

basketball if you hit the shot in the rigged basketball hoop. Like, who, who, who thought that would become this major political prop of the 2010s? But here we are. When was the last time you, do you remember eagerly anticipating the announcement of person of the year? I mean, it was cool, you know, it was like, it was a noteworthy thing when Obama won it. I remember that being a sort of, you know, political football in its own right. George W. Bush, uh, I mean, but, but like, but like. I feel like, you remember when the person of the year was you, which is, shockingly, this is like

13 years ago now, and I don't mean you, Brian Curtis. I mean, like, the word you and like a mirror. Like, that's, I feel like that's the last time I remember anyone having like a thoughtful conversation about the subject. Then thoughtful might be the wrong word, but like actually caring. Yeah. Oh, I'm just looking right now. Of course, Rudy Giuliani, some might have forgotten, was the 2001 person of the year. I guess there's a lot of, there's a lot of significance attached to this list, but there's also, you know, the protester was the winner of 2011, you know, I mean like Good Samaritans, 2005, whistleblowers in 2002. Good Samaritans, meaning like, rich people who give to charity,

who have charitable foundations. I just don't. Not somebody that stops on the side of the road and helps you change your tire, Good Samaritan. No, I mean, listen, if this were any other, I don't, I'm not saying that this is like an impeachable offense carrying this so much about Time magazine. But this fixation would be, would be galling if it were in any normal presidency, right? I mean, and that's to say nothing of him just going after, just going after a teenager on Twitter because he didn't win. Department of transforming news into a take. I want to bring you back, David, to the aforementioned British election results.

And the land rush to come up with a way that they can be linked to whatever you think should be happening. in American politics. You watch the news about a fairly unfamiliar, complicated election process, and you're like, how can I make a Bernie Sanders take? How can I make a Pete Buttigieg take?

You send me a couple of examples of this, just reading some headlines. This is in Politico. Biden warns that Boris Johnson's victory shows dangers of parties leaning too far left. Andrew Sullivan had a whole he was on a roll yesterday. This is

Andrew Sullivan's corner. Jeremy Corbyn, the American and the American left, I feel. It's like if there's one person that the bat signal went up last night, he's a simple lesson. There's a big majority in U.S. and UK for anti-PC

nationalism wedded to leftist economics. The first Democrat to get there wins. Anti-PC nationalism. And the Guardian, and Britain needs its own Mueller report on Russian interference. Whoa. That's by the way, that editor is,

that's an opinion piece and it's written by like the, I believe by the two founders of, of Fusion GPS or whatever that place is called. Oh, wow. So don't, if you're, if you're wondering if like the right end of the Twitterverse has already noticed this, the answers, yes. I like it when we talk about how people can consume more information now. I like it when everybody gets to play the,

British political expert when something like this happens. Yes. We don't consume it that fast. You don't really know that much about this. And probably not enough to construct a shaky suspension bridge to whatever you think should happen in American politics. A lot of great tweets from actual British celebrities who had their own, who actually voted in this election perhaps. Hugh Grant, who's had kind of a big week on Twitter, wrote their government. goes the neighborhood.

Neighborhood with a U, which I appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, that says that's the whole thing right there. And Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting and other books, I think wins with looks like the Stark's voted Lannister. Yes.

He's appealing to the ringer audience with that one. No, I mean, I, listen, I said before we, as we were discussing this, this topic, or the, you know, discussing, discussing this topic before the show came on, I said, you know, we should say something, we should talk about it, but also reserve the right to go back to it whenever the story continues to evolve. But, because it, you know, it is a big deal. But you're right. I mean, just like the, in so much as it's, in so much as it will continue to be an issue. And if it has any effect, or if there's any lessons to be learned, you know, in U.S. politics at all,

I think it's the Stark's voting Lannister is, I mean, at this point looks like it's the story, right? I mean, it was just the conservative party was able to you know, to tack way left on economics and and this is me talking like I know what I'm talking about, but they're able to tag

National Health Service. Yeah. And in a way, and the super lefty Labor Party was just not just not dexterous about the campaign at all. You know, there will be, we're going to continue to I mean, especially as we keep down this path towards our own election, this is going to be a data point.

But, man, I think I absorbed all about all I needed to absorb on Twitter pretty much immediately after it happened. Everybody was raring to go with these takes. The sound bite of the week, it's a little cheap to play Jesse Waters sound on this podcast. But when the Fox News Talking Head is defending the right of movies to have female reporters, sleep with their sources as one does in the movie Richard Jewel. Well, hit it. Especially in this current media environment. And just as an example, this happens all the time. Allie Watkins was a reporter for many, many years at many distinguished publications. She slept with one of her sources, allegedly, for four years and broke a lot of scoops,

according to this Politico report here. So it happens a lot. And it happens a lot in movies and and TV shows. Just a list right here. Fletch. With thank you for smoking. Top five. How to lose a guy in 10 days. I mean, it's all over Hollywood. Now they pick a problem with a Clint Eastwood movie. Come on. And you know what? How is someone not made a movie in Hollywood about all this deep state garbage going on in the Trump campaign? He have villains like Comey and McCabe. You have a celebrity like Trump. You have the Russians. It's such a juicy

angle, but they don't touch it. Clinton will be the villain in every movie. Fletch. Fletch is a man. Just in case anyone unfamiliar with that movie. So did you hear the laughs from the panel? Yeah.

What level of funny do you have to be to be considered funny on Fox News? That wasn't even funny. Like that wasn't even like him trying to be like he's not funny. funny, but that wasn't even him trying to be funny. He's like, yeah, can you imagine? He's left us.

I need some advanced. I need an advanced metric that compares Fox News funny to Fox NFL Sunday funny, where just like, no matter what you say, everyone else is forced by contract to goffaw as loudly as possible at every comment. I think that, I think it has largely replaced. I was watching, I accidentally watched a Jimmy Fallon clip this week, which I tried never to do. Uh-huh. I think it was Carrie Russell doing Star Wars Improids.

impressions or something. And Jimmy Jimmy Fallon has really taken over a fake laugh corner from NFL pregame shows and even in this case, cable news. Oh, wow. I have never seen anyone performatively laugh like Jimmy Fallon does.

It is, it is absolutely freaking wild. I mean, there's, there's a, there's like a moment to have that kind of, you know, courtesy laugh or just, Even genuine laugh at the end. He's just doing it like every five seconds.

It's just wedging in as many performative laughs as you could possibly imagine. It's really amazing. Listener mail, David. A bunch of you wrote in about the last few episodes, missing the signature Jim Cunningham produced mashups of our voices. First off, thank you for noticing Jim's insanely good work. Number two, it's not dead. We promise.

We've just been jerking Jim around with the schedule. lately. That is true. For holiday reasons. And David and I will be fake talking to each other at the end of an episode really soon.

So anyway, it's coming back and thank you for noticing. David, we talked about impeachment on Tuesday and how it would be covered by an NBA insider.

Listener Ben writes in to say, really think a draft analyst would love to talk about length when talking about drafting impeachment articles.

not sure why we didn't think of that. No. No. We're working too quickly. We talked about Clint Eastwood's new movie about Richard Jewell, which opens today. We talked about the movie's portrayal of Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs, who reported on Jewel. The movie apparently implies she traded sex for scoops, digging up an ugly old stereotype about female reporters. Olivia Wilde, who plays Scruggs in the movie, had a Twitter thread this week.

She writes, The Perspective. of the fictional dramatization of the story, as I understood it, was that Kathy and the FBI agent who leaked false information to her were in a pre-existing romantic relationship, not a transactional exchange of sex for information. My previous comments about female sexuality were lost in translation, so let me be clear. I do not believe sex positivity and professionalism are mutually exclusive. Kathy Scruggs was a modern, independent woman whose personal life should not detract from her accomplishments. She unfortunately became a piece of the massive puzzle that was responsible for the brutal

and unjust vilification of an innocent man, Richard Jewell, and that tragedy is what this film attempts to shed light on. A couple of thoughts on that. First of all, it's interesting that apparently somebody putting together this movie thought that Scruggs and the FBI agent were in a relationship. That is not something I have seen printed. It was not in Marie Brenner's mass. Vanity Fair article that formed the basis of that movie.

I'm pretty free for movies to be to exist within the bounds of historical fiction. In fact, I sort of hate it when journalists all gang up and say, you know, that's not how it really happened. That's not, it's like, yeah, this is not a news article. This is a movie. So they're going to have to to make changes to it. But if you're talking about a real person in this case, who is not famous, not a celebrity.

And you are essentially imputing this big thing about her career that is one of the big, big, big, no-noes of the profession that casts light directly on her professionalism. I think you are sort of obliged to show your work somewhere outside the bounds of the movie. You know, if Billy Ray, who wrote the screenplay, wants to write an op-ed and say, here's why I came to that conclusion by talking to X, Y, and Z, people around the case, all that kind of stuff.

Then great. And that's why I came to that. Then at least we kind of understand. But again, this is not a famous person. No. So I do think they have, if that's really how they came to this, it wasn't just let's spice up this movie and make it more interesting. Then they should come out and say that. And then we can judge that on.

its own merits. Yeah. I think, I think that's right. I mean, I mean, you played the Jesse Waters quote, I mean,

clip earlier. And, you know, there were a lot of people who were just saying unfortunate things online trying to defend this, you know,

this decision. And, I mean, I mean, part, part of the issue is that, I mean, well,

listen, I mean, a lot of people are saying that it, that this happens all the time in your life or, and or this isn't a,

this is not a trope in the way, you know, in the way that it was described. I mean, that's the problem is that is what Water said, is that it has been in a lot of movies, right? I mean, and that it's just utterly lazy at this point. This movie's being singled out because it's happening right now. It's not being unfairly singled out.

It's being singled out because it's coming out, and it's still making the dumb decisions of, you know, the years and decades past. And I think you're right. I mean, you got to show your work. I mean, there's not, I don't, I still, you know, I'm kind of at a loss for what the necessities. of this was. You know, if somebody

believed it to be true, I guess you're right. I mean, that's something we need to know. I mean, that would at least help explain it. But, you know, I think that I find it hard to imagine that if the reporter had been a man, that this is the story they would have told, right? I find it hard to imagine that it was so, like it was such a necessity in terms of drama.

I don't think they would have turned a reporter from a man into a woman simply to have, to make this, to, you know, to have that, to have that, because that trope was so invaluable to the movie. It was just a lazy, it was just lazy sexist trope, you know, and we can just leave it at that, I should hope. Yeah, I just don't. I mean, again, and again, I just want to add that, like,

I really do want movies to exist on a totally different plane than journalism. And I get tired of the just obligatory op-ed about every fucking historical movie. well, that's not what happened, you know, as if that's like, like movies should, if you make a movie about Barack Obama or Donald Trump or Steve Jobs or other people like that, yeah, I just, I just feel there's, there should be lots of elbow room for you to treat it like you would a novel about those people, you know, there should be so much room for historical fiction. But this, in this case, this just feels very, very different. And again, if that is, if that's the claim, I want to see, I want to see, I want to. to see that treated journalistically outside the bounds of the movie. I didn't want to comment on something else, which is we have on the one hand this scuzzy, crappy portrayal of Kathy Scruggs. I do see people then making the leap from that to a kind of blanket defense of her and the work the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote about Richard Jule, which to me is two very, very different arguments. You can be really uncomfortable with the first and reject it completely and say that

sucks. And the second one, I think, at least requires you to say this is a really big, complicated story and something you can't just push away. I saw this tweet from Kelly McBride, who's the SVP Appointer, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership. McBride tweets, feeling queasy about the Richard Jewell movie, it's true that journalists made mistakes, but the work of the AJC's Kathy Scruggs held up. That's just way too broad a brush to me to put on this. I've seen other articles, or at least one other article,

come out and kind of do the same thing. I'm not going to completely go down this wormhole. Maybe I'll put a few of the deep dives that were written at the time about the coverage of Richard Jewell. But if you just look at the third paragraph of the initial report, Scruggs and the AJC did on Jewel, it had this sentence that said he had approached the newspaper seeking publicity. This was in line with that hero bomber theory that was going around at the time that,

oh, Jewel did this and then he's going around taking this victory lap, right? He's he's calling us to get us to interview him. Jewel did not, in fact, do that. AT&T, whose pavilion he was working in, did that on his behalf. So that was like an error in the first article about this. this idea that everything held up, not to mention all these articles were about the guy who did not do it. Yeah. You know, that I just, I don't, we cannot say, oh, well, she was reflecting with the feds and the cops thought at the time and leave it at that. That's not enough for me.

This is a very complicated thing. And there's a reason this is an interesting story. And, and again, you don't, you don't absolutely do not have to accept the portray on the movie. I don't, I won't to understand that the part about the writing about Richard Joel that happened is not something we can wave away. Oh, it all held up. I just don't believe that. We flippantly asked on Tuesday's pod, does Clint Eastwood even know any journalists? T.J.

Wanderslug notes that he was married to TV anchor Dina Ruiz for 17 years. So David and I regret the flippancy. Listener, Nicholas Moore asks, could you rank the top five most accurate depictions of journalism in film and top five least accurate I don't know that I have

10 David in terms of accurate do you have any like to nominate I was going to say we actually don't I mean you know we don't actually have to do this work because Kate Nibbs did it for us instead of on the ringer.com what like two weeks ago

so she ranked she did She ranked the top 40, 45 movie journalists, apparently left Fletch off the list, which was a huge omission. But, you know, she were, but most of it, but listen, the work holds up, as some might say. Yeah, I mean, I'll go through the bottom or the top of her list. I mean, the top five. Let's see. Rosamond Pike in a private war.

I've not seen that one. Okay. The crew of Spotlight was number four. Fantastic work there. Number three, Seth Rogan and Longshot. His ethics were sky high in that. Number two was Redford and Hoffman from all the president's men. And number one was the killing fields.

Well, that's an interesting one. San Waterston. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a, you know, there are a whole lot of iterations of this out there. I recommend everybody to check out this piece. It's incredibly smart and incredibly funny, as we expect from Nibs. But yeah, it's amazing with how, as we discussed last time, how kind of uninteresting journalism is,

and journalists as a rule are that there are so many of them in films. Yeah, it is. And I think because, again, I think there's a big gap between the romance of the profession and the journalists themselves and the actual. interestingness of what their daily lives are like. And if I had to pick, you know, Spotlight and all the President's men, minus the amazing garage encounters, do a pretty good job of just showing what life is like.

Yeah. You know, how it's making phone calls and sitting in front of a computer terminal. It'd be, it'd be fun. It'd be fun if it wasn't, but that's what journalism is. All right, time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. Okay. There is your sigh. Tuesday's headline about the fall of WeWorks,

founder Adam Newman was the boy who cried work. As usual, our listeners are funnier than we were. Pandiora says it should have been from we woke to we broke. Tom Ganjami says, I'm a fool to do your dirt. We work. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

T.J says the headline should have been, we walked into that one. And your dad says it simply should have been, we weren't. It's a certain beautiful simplicity to that. This week's strain pun is from

Brad Boron. It's from the site The Spool. And for once, we know the artist behind the headline, David, because I had to

tweet at him to figure out where this was from. It's Clint Worthington, who was editor of the spool. He put this wondrous headline atop a review of the movie, Richard Jewell.

Okay? Now, I'm going to give you a few hints here. It's a little da-da. So you're going to take the protagonist's surname and join it with a mid-tier 80s action movie. Protagonist's surname, mid-tier 80s action movie. What was the spools strained pun headline? Jewel, or mid-tier 80s action movie.

I'm stuck on the pink pants. but that's not it right it's not like a James Bond wouldn't be mid-tier I'm trying to think like what would have jewel oh I know I was pretty mid-tier in the 80s go for it I was supposed to say romancing it's the other one not romancing the stone uh the sequel what's the sequel was oh jewel of the jewel of denial uh is it jewel of denial is that here we go jewel of denial that's a fantastic title I don't quite get it but that's That's fantastic. That's great. Oh, you don't need to get it, right?

Yeah, it's really good. Is it Clint Eastwood's denial of modernity? Is it oppresses denial of the truth? Jewel of denial. Fantastic. Fantastic. To extreme pun headline. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris LaMade a production magic by Bobby Wagner. We're back Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.