The Press Box - Impeachment, Lamar Jackson Takes, and Subscribing to Your Favorite Writer | The Press Box

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the latest on the possible impeachment of President Trump (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (22:00), subscribing to Charlie Pierce (33:00), the art of looking back at the Lamar Jackson haters (40:00), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Bill Simmons's Book of Basketball 2.0 podcast is officially out. This new podcast extends and reinvents his New York Times number one bestselling book from 2009 and breaks down the NBA's most important games, players, and teams. Starting with Steve Kerr in the premiere episode, Bill's using new commentary and fresh interviews to determine how the league has evolved and where it's headed. The first four episodes are out now wherever you get your podcasts and will continue on a weekly basis. check out the book of basketball on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. David, Facebook announced that henceforth it will officially be known as all caps. Facebook!

What I want to know is, what other brands do you think should go all caps? God. I mean, are we looking for ironic? I mean, there's like, like the logical answer would be. like Yahoo. Is that, is that already in caps? Another internet company. I think the exclamation point, right? Yeah. It kind of does the all caps word for.

I think they just got rid of the exclamation point, right? Or did they just, I don't remember how I need of the suburb. Jim is suggesting anything that's awkward to talk about in public incontinence products. It's like when you're like young men going to the drugstore to try to buy condoms. They're just like, do you have

where's the condom section? He's like, you mean Trojan? I don't know. I was joking in the office that it was that it was absolutely perfect for a company like Facebook that is just like now predominantly known at least in, you know, most of our lives is like the thing that our grandparents used to keep track of us. It's just like an old people social media now. It's perfect that they're like the one, the company that doesn't understand what all caps means.

Like they're new the, the new motto is just like Facebook. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that meant I was yelling, you know? Yeah. I thought you were going to say that Grandma and Grandpa just can't hear you all as well so you had to be like Facebook. What?

Facebook! Facebook! We're the On the Media of Media Podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. We've got lots and lots of stuff to get to today.

We'll talk about buying a subscription not to Esquire, but to writer Charles P. Pierce, plus Lamar Jackson, the fall of the guy who caused the fall of deadspin, the dial a quote of the week, and a read-through the listener mail. But David, let us start with impeachment. It feels weird to say, by the way, the House may be impeaching the president of the United States, but it is kind of by the way, given all the other news that's happening. Big Washington Post story out last night stating that Donald Trump wanted Bill Barr,

the attorney general, to give a news conference saying he hadn't broken any laws with his now famous Ukraine call. Barr declined to give that news conference. Trump then called the three reporters from the Washington Post, Matt Zapatowski, Josh Dossi, and Carol Leoneg lowlifes on Twitter. I don't know what you thought about this story, but I like this tweet from that guy who tweets is Richard Nixon. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah. He says, I think the story is not that Barr refused a news conference. it's what worries Barr so much that he leaked to that. Yeah. Which I think is a pretty good way to put it. Yeah, I mean, I think that the existence of any story such as that has to be, you have to sort of suss out the implications of where it came from. If it was indeed Barr or someone close to Barr, functionally bar, whatever,

who put that word out there, I mean, it's funny because it seems like there's this, There's some sort of parabola that goes on where you can track the sort of, I don't know, willfulness or gutsiness or just lack thereof. And people that work for President Trump, where they come in and everybody's just sort of like, well, maybe this will be an adult in the room. And then immediately they just sank to some depth that was never previously considered, even under the worst case scenario of toadiness or towing the line or just like, you know, spinelessness. then at some point, usually because of some realization of who they're working for, not in a moral way, but in a self-preservational sort of way, they kind of bounce back to the mean or whatever just because they feel like they need to preserve their, I mean, preserve their own integrity, no matter, you know, what they've done to destroy it up to that point, which is a long way of

saying, yeah, Barr must be really fearing for what's going to happen to him or at least what's going to happen to the administration and leaving him in the wake. It's somewhere between preserve their own integrity and not get indicted, which is clearly what was motivating the other big story of the week. Gordon Sondland, ambassador of the European Union, updated his testimony to Congress. That was the word I read, update. Remember when people would make a really bad error in an article and write update, colon? Gordon Sondland did that with congressional testimony this week. He at first had denied the presence of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Then he confirmed it, referring to his conversation with the advisor to

Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky, Sondland said, I said that resumption of the USAID would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks. Anti-corruption statement equals an investigation of a made-up story about Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukrainians meddling in the election. The funny part about this, David, was that Republicans had set this very clear bar when we first got that rough transcript of the Ukraine call and said, look, if there's any

quid pro quo here, we're going to be really, really disappointed. And that would be, that would definitely be a cause for concern and who knows what we'd have to do. Then there was actually quid pro quo admitted by almost everybody who testified

before Congress, Mick Mulvaney in a White House press conference. And now Gordon Sondland, who is a Trump donor, who is not a deep state quote unquote guy, right? And now the defense changed. I love this from Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina. What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward Ukraine, it was incoherent. It depends on who you talk to. They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo.

So now the defense is not. I, this isn't a quid pro quo. It's, they're too dumb to execute a quid pro quo. So we couldn't possibly impeach him because they're not smart enough to have carried this out. Yeah. I mean, and that's, I mean, Lindsay Graham has a, I mean, evolving might be, is certainly giving him too much credit, but has a constantly changing response to anything like this. I mean, he previously said if there was quid pro quo, that'd be a problem presumably thinking there would, that something that specific would never be proven. And then, I think as of earlier this week, he was working the kind of taking his team off the field.

I mean, he was just like, I just have so little trust for this process that I don't believe anything that comes out of it. I'm not even paying attention to what's coming out of it. So, I mean, it's easy to say, to dismiss it and say, like, we just shouldn't pay attention to him. But he is sort of, he is one of the few Republican voices who's out there at least trying to form some sort of argument in favor of, you know, defending the presidents, even defense, again, using very loosely, I'm using that term very loosely there. For Trump, for his own part, I'm just sort of like mind boggled by, I know we're going to talk something about this whistleblower,

but his insistence upon the whistleblower being the only, or the, you know, whatever, if there's an error with the, if the whistleblower is not 100%, then he's, you know, fully acquitted when there's just this investigation going on that has the whistleblower's statement backed up 100 times over. and that the actual existence of the whistleblower matters at zero at this point. I mean, I mean, everything else is, everything's been proven out. And his initial argument that the whistleblower didn't experience anything firsthand, uh, see, I mean, almost is, I mean, again, it's totally beside the point because now

we have a million, all these people who have, who experience things firsthand. Far be it from me to question Trump's game plan, uh, or his methodology, because he does seem to sort of, wriggle out from under all of the the weight of almost every seemingly impeachable otherwise problematic situation he gets himself into but it seems to me like just saying

whatever you think I did I didn't do anything wrong is a lot is a much safer bet for maintaining his presidency than putting everything on the veracity of a whistleblower who is when everything that he said has been proven

am I wrong about that? No, you know, you're absolutely right. He, that and that seems like where they're kind of congregating now, the Republicans, writ large is, okay, okay, okay, he did everything, but it's not impeachable. And you hit on the other one, which Lindsey Graham is kind of hurting everyone too, which is this is a partisan process because we'll never actually have anything turn up that will refute that. So you can just kind of at the end of the day go there.

By the way, partisan process. Like everything in Washington is a partisan process. Sure. Republicans passing laws under Trump was a partisan process, which presumably they want those laws to be taken seriously. As a total aside, I know we've joked around many people who joked around before about Fox News Channel's ability to just like stick its fingers in its own ears and la la la, it's way through any bad news.

But at the moment when they called the Kentucky. governor's race for Bashir, I was, I flipped over to Fox to see what their reaction was and they weren't covering the election at all. And it was Sean Hannity interviewing Lindsey Graham and they were going through all the ways in which Trump is being mistreated compared to previous presidential investigations. Going through that like checklist that Lindsey Graham has been waving around. It's pretty incredible. When you talk about Trump's obsession with the whistleblower, that's interesting to me because Nixon was very obsessed with the identity of deep. wrote. And I think it's, I think it's the fact that there's this kind of masked avenger. If I were, if I were grasping for a pop culture reference now, I would say something about the watchman, but I can't actually remember the character's name. So just table that for a second. This masked avenger, vigilante, if you will, within the administration. And the fact that it's a mystery is, is what makes it intriguing. Because if you do all this kind of right wing oppo on Bill Taylor or Gordon Sondland or any of the people who have, you know, lined up to go testify before Congress, you know, I'm sure those talking points will be dutifully repeated on Hannity and elsewhere. But it's not as exciting. It's not as, you know, it doesn't sort of move people in the way that, oh, there's a secret whistleblower out to get me. I mean, essentially it is it is the personification of Trump's whole bit about the deep state, which only works if you don't actually know who any of the

the actors are and you imagine this faceless boogeyman. Trump has now has the faceless boogeyman so of course he's going to latch on to that. So you think it's more valuable as a faceless boogeyman than as an actual person? Yeah, deep throat was. I mean, I understand are you making the case that Trump is

obsessed because of himself, just like the rest of the world is because of the ambiguity, because of the masked man aspect of it? Sorry. Or because or do you think Trump has manipulating our thirst to know in order to keep this, in order to keep the kind of argument in his court. All of the above.

And I think even as a public just kind of figure, he's more, he, she is more mysterious as the whistleblower. Because as soon as we know the identity, everybody's going to struggle and go, okay, it's some, you know, policy person we've never heard of. And then we'll move on with our lives.

I think that there's a lot of truth to that. I think you're also giving him maybe a little bit too much credit. My guess based on absolutely nothing. I mean, I think to me, I think that there is, that he is sort of obsessed with the idea of the whistleblower, the idea of this anonymous person. But the thing about it is he knows who it is, right? I mean, he, he, he 100%, the president Trump 100% knows the identity of the person who is who we were referring to as the whistleblower. We know that not just because his son is out there tweeting his name and shit, but because presumably the president can find these things out through any number of channels. But he's still referring to it is in this, in these sort of vague.

wait, I guess to me, maybe this doesn't work. But if you want to make the Watchman connection, this is like me sitting in the New York Ringer office surrounded by people who have seen future Watchman episodes because they're reviewing it or editing reviews of it. And when I walk in on Mondays and I'm just like, oh, my God, can you believe what happened on Watchman? Everybody just kind of grins at me knowingly and nods, but you can tell they just want to tell me what happened in episode four so badly.

It makes me an idiot. No, I mean, I just think like there, it's the, there is something really irresistible about continuing, continuing into discussion where you know more than the other person. You know more than who you're talking to. So I'm just going to keep having this conversation to advance my feeling of superiority, even though it makes me sort of, renders me sort of helpless in the process. And even given that, by the way, the whistleblower is about to be unmasked. You mentioned Trump Jr. sending out the Breitbart article that it'll live. allegedly named the whistleblower. The mainstream press has kind of backed off this. But as Joe Pompeo had a piece in Vanity Fair where he quotes a political writer saying, what is happening right

now is the right wing people are softening the ground so that someone names him, and I'm quoting exactly here, and then we all have to cover it, right? If someone walks out, if Trump blurts it out, or Rand Paul who was who was demanding it at a press conference the other day or rally the other day demands it, then the media has to do it. So the question, I guess, is why isn't the press naming the whistleblower now? The mainstream press. Pompeo lists a few reasons in his article, and I want to get your take on this. One is, this is what the Washington Post says, the government law gives grants a whistleblower anonymity, so we journalists should essentially honor that anonymity. Number two, the whistleblower could be in danger

right? Somebody could go try to do something stupid and try to hurt them in some kind of way. Number three is most of what the whistleblower says has been confirmed by others. So really what's the point of unmasking the whistleblower at this point? Yeah. What do you feel about that? Does the press have the obligation to honor this person's anonymity? It's a good question. I mean, it should be pointed out that there are any number of Republicans and right-wing

operatives who are out there on Twitter and other platforms like, putting out like tiny screen grabs, screen caps of like a sentence of, you know, the whistleblower act of 1989 or like, or in Rand Paul's case, like, citing like the declaration of independence or whatever he did just to like prove by misdirection and hand-waving that there's not actually whistleblower protection inherent in our law, on our law. So it's, so it's much, it's a bigger, it's an even bigger issue than the one we're discussing that the sort of protections that this person deserves. But I mean, I think in some sense, to answer your question, you know, mainstream journalism is a little bit stymied by their own resources maybe or just, I mean, like if they had,

in almost any case, if they had felt it was necessary or right or whatever to do the investigation and find out who it was, I don't think they would hesitate. I think they did hesitate and for good reason. And now it's kind of hard to figure out when to pull the trigger on, on naming this person. So if you kept it a secret this long, then why are you deciding to change your mind tomorrow, essentially? Yeah. And I do think there's, I mean, I do think that there's the issue of safety and, you know, the issue of the kind of the common good, the greater good. I mean, but I don't know. I don't know. It's not there. I mean, they're not obligated in some sort of, you know, strict journalistic ethic sense, I would guess. But I just, I feel like. I don't know. I mean, maybe they're all waiting for for President Trump to go out on the tarmac and just blurt out his name. Maybe that's maybe that's the moment that the journalistic world is waiting for. I think they are. I think they're waiting for Trump to sort of absolve them. I line up with my old boss, Jack Schaefer, who wrote about this back in September. He says, it's not the job of the press to protect the identities of official whistleblowers who prefer anonymity. Journalists can and do offer anonymity at all sorts of sources, but nowhere is it written that just because an official tipster desires anonymity. A reporter is obligated to granted. Anonym is generally given to sources by reporters as a transactional good in exchange for information, et cetera, et cetera.

I just don't, I don't see a particularly compelling reason to do this. As you say, personal harm may be the most compelling reason, but just because somebody filled out this form and did this through the proper channels, what does that have to do with reporters? I don't know. I do think people do things like that all the time. To what Schaefer said, I mean, I do think, I do think that. There's, I mean, people were saying, and we, I think, talked about it on the podcast not long ago, that your anonymity is much safer being an anonymous op-ed writer for the New York Times than it is being a whistleblower to the U.S. government. And I think, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Times, at least, was sort of cowed by that kind of moment of self-awareness.

that if you know if they're if they're protecting names for the greater good then that should probably extend beyond the walls of the Times you know bullpen and and maybe other news organizations have seen the same thing or you know follow you're just following the Times lead um you know I mean I think saving unless you get to some point where in order to tell the story revealing this person's name uh makes a difference I'm not sure what the motivation is and like we just said. I mean, I think it's going to happen inevitably. And I'm sure the Times and the Washington Post and all these other you know, all the other major media organizations probably have their have their pieces written about this person and

about, you know, what if anything their identity means to the larger story. But, well, I guess we'll have to wait and see when, you know, that's considered fair game. This was definitely the funniest moment. Actually, there's two

funny moments to two funniest moments of impeachment this week. Ready? One is Bill Taylor, who was testifying, and he in his testimony included a bit about trying to schedule a meeting of all these White House principles about how they could get the aid to Ukraine freed up when it was stopped. And Bill Taylor was asked, why wasn't the meeting scheduled? He said he was unable to schedule it. This is what Taylor said, quote, I think this was also about the time of the Greenland question about purchasing Greenland, which took up a lot of energy in the National Security Council, to which Congressman Adam Schiff replied, okay, that's disturbing for a whole different reason. So they could not get a Ukraine meeting scheduled because Donald Trump was talking about buying Greenland. This was,

this was, this was taking up the energy of people inside the government. That's number one. Amazing impeachment note number two comes from Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post. Gordon Sondland, whom we mentioned was describing a July 4th party, he threw in Brussels that was attended by Ukrainian president Zelensky. So the Democrats in Congress were saying, wait, what was going on at this party that you threw that was attended by the president? And Sondland responds, the subject of the dinner was not Ukraine and was not President Zelensky. The prime minister of Romania was there. The president of Poland was there at this dinner. Jay Leno was there at the dinner.

The question comes back, did President Zelensky, as a comedian, get along well with Jay Leno? Sondland answers, he was honored to meet him. Apparently, Jay Leno was his hero. Alex Burns of the New York Times tweets, Jay Leno was his hero, might be the most unsettling thing anyone has revealed in the impeachment inquiry so far. This is where we are. Do you think Jay Leno, was Jay Leno, like, wearing a nice suit for this event? because I don't know that he's taken off his Canadian tuxedo since he left the Tonight Show. Did he come with

like EU material that he think? Real zingers that he was going to A few bits. Yeah. I'm going to share with everybody. That is I just amazing. Jay Leno has arrived at the impeachment inquiry. And I can't wait for his New York Times

op-ed. All right, David, it's 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 here on the press box we have

desperately tried to ignore all content related to okay boomer alas David we can no longer avert our eyes because conservative talk show host Bob Lonsbury raise your hand if you knew who Bob Lonsbury was five minutes ago tweeted about it

he wrote boomer is the N word of ageism being hip and flip does not make bigotry okay, nor is it a derisive epitette acceptable because it of new. Boomer is the N-word of ageism, says this guy. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, I should be able to say Boomer if it's

part of the lyrics. Thanks to Henry Redman and Alex Ungerman, our very own Jason Concepcion made that joke. And it is fantastic, by the way. Overworked, but fantastic. There's Peace in New York Times this week, David, urging the Louvre to do something about the Mona Lisa, which writer Jason Farago says creates a giant traffic jam of selfie takers. Okay. The headline of the Times piece was, it's time to take down the Mona Lisa.

And it was an overwork Twitter joke to write. They found her old tweets. Thanks to Jason Wilson and Devin Scraid. Chris Almeida's favorite team, the world champion Washington Nationals visited the White House this week. Ryan Zimmerman, very complimentary of Trump. and as teams do, the Nats presented the president with a number 45 jersey. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write personally. I think it's totally appropriate that Trump was presented with a white nationalist jersey.

Oh, wait, sorry, I misread that. Thanks to Dion Geftaltz. And finally, there's news from the twitching carcass of Deadspin. You remember that Paul Maidman, editorial director of Geo Media, sent that memo that led to the firing of Barry Picheskin and then the resignation of the entire Deadspin staff. Well, on Tuesday, Maidment himself resigned. Oh, my God. And it was an overworked Twitter joke to write.

This is the third time in five days that the entire staff of Deadspin has resigned. Thanks to Pep. If you brought dead website humor directly from the gallows to Twitter.com, congrats. You made the Overwork Twitter joke of the week. Before we get to the notebook dump, David, let's take a quick break.

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All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And should we just let our jaws hang open about Deadspin for one more second? Yes. So Paul Maidemit, that Geo Media editorial director, is part of the reason everyone left. And over at Slate, Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levine had a really great conversation with Deadspin veterans about what went down. Megan Greenwell, former editor says, I was in dozens of meetings with Paul Maidemant and with Jim Spanfeller, who's the CEO of Geomedia. Between the time they took a lot of media. over in the time I left. I could just never get them to care. I would sit in rooms with them and present

them vision memos I'd written in spreadsheets showing data and testaments from people who worked there and people who read the site and other media people. It was the most frustrating experience in my professional life because it was truly like talking to a brick wall. After Greenwell resigned, Tom Lee tells Slate, I think I described it to the rest of staff like we're trying to explain how to microwave work to a baby. No matter what we said, he meaning Maidman, just sat there. He seemed agreeable. He would nod. He would say, yes, I get that. That all makes sense. I understand that. And it was just there was no movement. So that guy who carried out the order to make Deadspin go just sports has now resigned from Deadspin. It really, this all just really reminds me of just the looting of a country where the bad people go in and they wreck everything and they take everything. And then they just leave. There's no. There's no upside. They just, they just, they just, they just left.

So this guy who, who executed the order is now gone. And now even more people are gone from the House of Deadspin. What did you make of it? I mean, it was just sort of befuddling. I don't know. I mean, my first reaction was it, I don't, I mean, how, okay, he said he was leaving, to, but Maidman said he was leaving to pursue an entrepreneurial opportunity, which probably could have fit to.

Overworked or joke in the B category. There were a lot of people who were also claiming that they had editorial opportunities. They were taking off to follow up on. But it felt like he was either forced out because of all the craziness that had just happened or that he had quit because he was not, you know, he didn't want to be the face of that or didn't even agree with all the decisions that were made letting everybody leave. I guess we'll have to wait to know if either of those things is true but my first reaction was like can you

it's not like he left with like a bunch of like stock options in his back pocket it seems like he just sort of like he either showed himself or was shown the door pretty pretty abruptly you know you can say that go media or Spanfeller feast sticks around or whatever we're sort of like looting the place I don't know if maybe got any loot It seems sort of like he just, it seems like he just, I mean, he just couldn't stand the blogging. Like making up, he was like, apparently he was the one or the force behind all these like, bizarreo anonymous deadspin blogs popping up trying to fill the chasm left by the absence of the entire staff.

But it also makes me wonder if there's not just some like obscure labor law that like prohibits you from firing somebody and leaving five seconds later. Like shouldn't like shouldn't Barry be like magically rehired by Go Media or something? If the guy that just like kicked him out the door is like now gone. It just seems so bizarre. Yeah.

That sort of reminds me like you know, it's like when you have a team with a with a GM who makes a terrible trade and then you fire the GM. Shouldn't you just be able to rescind the trade? Just like no, no, never mind. We don't want to do that. Well, and the question that you always ask in sports and and I think is totally applicable here is just like

who is the person that fired him like where were they three days ago? Like how do you care enough about this now and you didn't care enough to stop the like the typhoon of madness from just that just occurred? Something I've always wondered about these guys and about a lot of the people who are, let us say, dismembering beloved media institutions at the moment is

nobody knew who these guys were before this. Nobody recognized his names. If you put these names, even in front of people who, work in media, very few people would recognize the names at all. I mean, they just have no idea. Now their Google searches are just filled with, you know, pieces about how terrible they are. So I always wondered, what is the appetite of these guys to just sit there and take that? Like, whatever professional opportunity you're talking about and whatever you think, you know, how much money you're being paid or whatever you get out of this, how much is work.

it to just turn you from a fairly anonymous media executive into this just absolutely hated person. And we may have just found what the limit is. Because I don't believe that these guys are completely immune to this. I mean, it's got to be just like, whoa, everybody hates me. Everybody hates me. And I just wonder if there's a point where you say, you know what, I don't want this anymore. I'm done. I'm out of here.

Yeah. I mean, and not to invoke any sort of. sort of borderline problematic ageism. But they are from like, you know, a generation of, or probably multiple generations in internet time, removed from the people that they're employed, that they're the bosses of, and certainly a lot of their readership.

And they couldn't have been prepared for, I mean, I don't even know if Maidman or Spanfeller had Twitter accounts prior to this, but they certainly didn't have Twitter presences that were prepared for the, reput—the rancacking that their reputations are taking on Twitter. Didn't somebody find a Spanfeller tweet about the Knicks? Saying the Knicks were the worst run organization in sports.

Didn't I see that? I'm sure that's true. But it's just amazing that, like, you know, no one's—I mean, I'm not seeing anybody adding either of these two guys as they're just, like, running them down in tweets, and I'm sure no one would have the—it would be reluctant to if they were active, if they were active users. But it's just like, yeah, I mean, like, the Google results are, are, I mean, would be enough for any of us just to like find a new career.

But imagine just like, whatever. It's it. What if your next career is like doing PR for Amtrak or just something just totally innocuous like that? And they're like, and they're like, all right, you have to get on Twitter to like, you know, to do your job and your entire. And like you just can't get on Twitter and a skib without, you know, without being barraged by this stuff. It'd just be, it'd just be like paralyzing. I mean, and, you know. Can you imagine you get an email that just says like heads up on.

on a, you know, story possibility. Just some like PR spam from one of the guys who runs Deadspin. Heads up. Hamtrak writers, writers program is back. Oh my God. That'd be incredible. By the way,

last week we asked, what would the Deadspin headline about the fall of Deadspin be? And listener Aaron Frye has one we whiffed on. Let's remember some guys, the staff of Deadspin. I can't believe we've been thinking of that. Thank you, Aaron. David,

I want to talk to you about subscribing to Charlie Pierce. because Digiday did a piece this week on Esquire's micro membership program centered around Pierce, and a whole colleague of ours from Grantland. What does that mean? Well, a paywall is in front of Pierce's pieces, which are usually run three to five times a day, and the paywall kicks in after you've read three of his stories a month. You can get around it for an $18 annual subscription fee or a $2 monthly fee. Members also get to read Charlie's newsletter and get an Esquire towback.

Very nice. Michael Sebastian, who is Esquire's editor-in-chief, told Digiday that Pierce's posts were getting around 60,000 views a day in 2018, which led them to try the micro-membership program starting in November of last year since then. Apparently Pierce's traffic has gone up 60% and the program has 10,000 subscribers. The site is also working with conference calls, open to members after large political events, where subscribers can ask Pierce a question. So there's like, there's like a speaker phone and you're like, Charlie, what did you think of, Can you please make fun of Trump?

I would like that. I would prefer that over a beer, but for the rest of humanity, that sounds, that sounds fine. The purported success of this model for Pearson Esquire could potentially lead to something bigger. Delia Kai of BuzzFeed writes in her newsletter, which is called Dees Links. It would be hard to imagine the New York Times doing this for saving.

It's called what? It's called Dees Links. We're just throwing it out to Jim here for the end of the show. Dees Links. It wouldn't be hard to imagine the New York Times doing this for, say, Maggie Haberman specials of the New Yorker, debuting a Tolentino fan club membership. Though if there's anything to learn for the New York Times handwrainging over writers running off and focusing on their book deals, it might be that outlets are growing increasingly uneasy with the fact that writers can now very easily track, assess, and seize the means of monetization substackification for themselves. Can't have the Google Doc proletariat going off and manifesting their true worth, you know. So what do you think about this, David, about subscribing to a writer within a particular publication like Esquire?

I mean, it's long been theorized that this is sort of the future, right? Or if it's not, I mean, a writer, a certain vertical, a blog to use the old parlance, that, or just a micro-transactional model, kind of more, more broadly, that you would just have some sort of, you know, a bank account on Apple news or whatever you're whatever portal you're reading your stuff from and you just pay like a penny every time you want to read a thing. Yeah, I mean, I think it makes some sense.

I think that you know, Charlie Pierce has been, has, has, maybe if anybody who can just, you know, he can feel comfortable knowing that he's, you know, achieved enough in life that he doesn't have to constantly fret about, you know, being trapped behind a paywall. And certainly, you know, I would pay to read the stuff that he writes.

But it's, you know, it's an interesting proposition. I mean, it's obviously much more, I would be much more eager to pay 18 bucks a year to read Charlie Pierce or any number of writers that I like than to pay even just twice that to read to subscribe to an entire magazine. that they wrote for because it's just the you know just the kind of paralyzing feeling of having to plop down 40 or 50 bucks or

something you know I mean but I don't it's interesting it's interesting I can't wait to see how it goes isn't it incredible that we've reached the point in history where Esquire as a brand is kind of like smaller

than an individual writer for Esquire I mean that That's pretty credible to me. I mean, I guess if you had, you know, gone to somebody in the 60s and said, you can just subscribe to Tom Wolfe. Send us a check and we'll like pull out the magazine pages and you don't have to and you don't read the rest of it. You know, and that, that or that's your attraction to doing. I guess that makes sense.

But it's amazing to me that, again, being old, that the, the attraction isn't Esquire magazine. Yeah. That's not, that isn't. But that's where we are at this point, right? It's how does Esquire make money? Okay, we'll make you subscribe to Charlie's pieces about Trump and about the Democrats. And that will be, that's, that's the lure to get you in. I still, again, it means we're old, but I still, it's still, it's still hard for me to wrap my mind around that.

And not to take issue with these links, because I'd never want to do that. But what you're talking about there is this situation, this, this idea of, oh, this is, this is freedom. for the writers to sort of get out and monetize themselves. That scares me. I don't know if I like that idea. I want to surf off the goodwill of the rest of the people at the ringer. I want Haley O'Shaughnessy and Katie Baker and Brian Phillips and everybody to, I want them to reflect their popularity and the goodwill they've built up onto me.

I don't want to go out and say, oh, I'm Brian Curtis. You know, if you want me, here's the number. give me your credit card. That's actually scarier to me than being within, you know, a nurturing publication. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean, I completely agree with that emotional, emotion, but I think that there's a, it's a certain, I mean, we had a conversation about newsletters not that long ago, and this sort of feels like just an alternate path for that same sort of writer, the sort of writer who has a almost like raconteurish personality, at least written on the page, someone that can talk, interestingly, about a broad array of subjects,

but also comprehensively about, you know, their specific, whatever topic is at hand. You know, I would think that whatever, my guess is that whatever led Charlie Pierce to agree to this new setup is probably a similar impulse to the one that would lead him to be to start his own newsletter if he were a good bit younger. But I mean, I do think that there's a certain sort of empowerment inherent in it. This is a little bit different just because it's a paywall. And it's a and, you know, there is a risk. And financial considerations, immediate financial considerations aside, obviously the greatest risk with any paywall is that your relevance takes a hit. And then, you know, that's the opposite of empowerment.

I want to talk to you about Lamar Jackson, David, because sports writers are always looking for content opportunities and there's been no better one lately than clowning the people who thought Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was going to be bad. And let me explain if you're not a sports person. Jackson is having an amazing MVP type season for the Ravens who beat the Patriots Sunday night, the Patriots first loss of the season. And every time Jackson has a good game, sports Twitter revisits the comments from people who thought Jackson was going to be a bad. QB, most prominently among them former NFL GM Bill Pollian. Because during last year's draft, in the lead up to it, Pollyon said that Lamar Jackson, who is black, should not be a QB. He should be a wide receiver. And whether or not that was racist, it was certainly echoing decades worth of racist player evaluation and thought that preoccupied the NFL.

Pollyan doubled and tripled down on this idea. Here he is last February on ESPN's Golick and Wingo. Lamar Jackson, speaking of the size, quarterback or wide receiver on the next one? I think wide receiver, exceptional athlete, exceptional ability to make you miss, exceptional acceleration, exceptional instinct with the ball in his hand, and that's rare for wide receivers. That's A, B, and who else? Name me another one, he's like that, right? Julio's not even like that.

This guy is incredible in the open field. and great ability to separate. And again, short and a little bit slight and clearly, clearly not the thrower that the other guys are. The accuracy isn't there. So I would say, don't wait to make that change. Don't be like the kid from Ohio State and be 29 when you make the change. So along those lines.

It's calling Lamar Jackson short was one of his really strange bits. Mark Jackson is 6'3. This week anyway, Polly and Fest Up to Jarrett Bell in USA Today. I was wrong, he says, because I use the old traditional quarterback standard. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Anyway, he has finally admitted that he was wrong about Lamar Jackson. David, does this end one of the great content bingges of our time, bagging on Bill Pollyon for a horrendous take he made over a year ago? Okay, also Bougar McFarlane had this take.

I'm sure others had this take as well. I need to be established. At some point, I think Rissillo made the case, and I'm very, compelling case, not too long ago, that this argument, the railing against the vague people who thought Lamar Jackson should be a wide receiver was sort of a mugs game, unless you're actually like, could find evidence of people actually saying it besides Bill Pollan one time on Mike and Mike. Obviously, Bill Bolian said it more than once. And now people are sort of retroactively digging up all the names of people who said it. But it is a little bit, I mean, the vast

majority of people of the vast majority of people that I heard referencing Lamar Jackson potentially playing wide receiver were just other people who were vaguely quoting someone else who might have said it or quoting Bill Pollan specifically, right? I mean, it was this sort of like idea that people who'd done their own intense film evaluations of Lamar Jackson. Right. I mean, it wasn't even people that thought that. It was people that like were that were reciting the idea that they had been, that was just kind of floating in the ether. Yeah, I mean, listen, Lamar Jackson is an incredible quarterback. And, you know, well, the idea that, I mean, I think just, I mean, I think that the biggest problem with it, I mean, who knows what Polians, you know, analytic process is.

But the biggest problem with it, I think, was just that, you know, I mean, it was just that he was constantly singled out. And just the idea that he should, I mean, even that he should play wide receiver instead of, you know, embarking on a career as a mediocre quarterback. If you thought he wasn't good. I mean, how often do you hear that set about other quarterbacks, particularly white quarterbacks? I mean, there are many of them have, there are quarterbacks who have transitioned to wide receiver in the NFL. I mean, the list is short but significant. But, I mean, how often do you hear that said about, you know, the various white quarterbacks out there that they should just, you know, trying to figure out how to play tight in? or like, you know, they should just like, you know, see if they can play running back.

It just doesn't happen. So, I mean, I think that's, that's the problem. It's somebody who tries to get inside the minds of sports writers for fun and a good time. Can I say what I think some of the reaction to Bill Pollyan is about? If we just stipulate that what Pollyan said was stupid, obviously seemed to be seemingly wrong and ugly, I just think, I think part of when sports writers are sort of bagging on him, what they're admitting is that they also don't have any idea how to evaluate quarterbacks. Remember, remember, remember that five minutes when Sam Darnel was good? Remember that five minutes earlier this season when Daniel Jones was good, said all the

sports writers in America? Remember Baker Mayfield being good? Merrin, remember Jared Goff and Carson Wentz being top tier quarterbacks? I don't think anyone has any idea how to do that. And they all know they don't have any idea how to do this. So they look at the particularly top. toxic Bill Polion examples. Oh, look at that guy over there.

Wow. Wouldn't want to be him right now. Yeah. Meanwhile, who doesn't in their freezing cold takes inventory have like pieces that are totally wrong about the five guys I just mentioned? Yeah, no, that's right. And I think that in the defense of anybody that, I mean, Polion or anybody else, I mean, I'm sure he probably walked in with, with, you know, a list of talking points

and the hosts of whatever show were just like, this is the interesting one. Let's go. Mm-hmm. But, I mean, and listen, I mean, you mentioned all those other quarterbacks. I mean, we can already start looking ahead to, I mean, the ringer has, I think, three pieces this week, or will by the end of the week on LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, who is kind of sprung from relative anonymity to the top of the draft boards. And every conversation on ESPN with McShea or Kuiper always ends up in this sort of, it seems like every year ends up in this sort of like meta discussion as to whether or not the ranking,

based on talent or based on what teams perceive talent to be. And I think that that's part of the whole conversation, right? Is that we're we're having, we're rating players based on where their perceived value is or where we think they're going to be drafted. And, you know, if you want to make the case that, like, who I mean that any of these guys is not worthy of being drafted where they are, that's not nearly as interesting as,

you know, saying, or I mean, I guess it'd be more interesting to say it's a fifth round talent and he's being drafted in the top five or something like that, you know, but it's just, but you're just stuck in this sort of like endless cycle of, of comparative nonsense. You know, no one really even knows what we're arguing about. Got to dial a quote of the week for you, David. He's back. Oh, no. Because I'm sure you saw the news that Steve Easterbrook's CEO of McDonald's was fired this week. Because he was in a relationship with a subordinate. Well, the New York Times. Times needed a quote to put right in the middle of their story and who did they turn to? They turned to John Hamburger editor of the franchise times casual dining has suffered

fast casual upstarts that everybody fell in love with have struggled said hamburger and McDonald's seems like they've been pretty good at driving the business forward thanks to Jamdad for putting that out John Hamburger. The name is said hamburger.

It's on its own. David, longtime listeners of this podcast may know that Australia is the official country of the press box. Just as gin blossoms is the official band. Well, this comes from Australian

listener Jason Say. He writes, it has been noted down under that the shout out for the official ban was brought back, but not the official country. We're as mad as a cut snake. What?

Exclamation point. Wow. Do you have anything you'd like to say to the people of Australia about us neglecting to mention? No, Australia is more your thing, man. I mean, they can be, they can be, I have a lot of admiration for them and hope that someday I am, I am privileged enough to visit there. But I have family there, I guess. So I, okay, I'm on board again. Sorry about that, Australia. There's Matt. Please don't be as mad as a cut snake. We apologize. We got this both from Jason Gay, our pal, and from takes from the crypt during Sundays aforementioned Ravens win over the Patriots.

Chris Collinsworth and Al Michaels got into a discussion. And Collinsworth offered a familiar phrase. Listen up. So you're saying he takes the gut fueling out of it, right? I think that's right. Chris Collinsworth says. Multiple people notices, David. It's a thing now.

Speaking of Pressbox IP, it's time for David Schumacher, guess is a strain pun headline. Oh, no. Tuesday's headline about some marijuana that had been stuck up a prisoner's nostril for 18 years and turned into a stone was nose out of joint. As usual, our listeners were even funnier. Kay Haken says it should have been nose stone unturned, which is very good. Texas archaeologist says joint gets stoned. says Summerfeld says stoned in the joint Salaris Prime and Justin Matthews suggested

the headline should have been Gonja nose pretty good and Tony Gangemi and Andy Cliver both suggest nosebud and by the way folks that is spectacular

nosebud today's headline comes from ABC News which is quickly becoming news of the weird but hey that's good for our purposes and today's headline, David, was spotted by Alex Peterson and Matt. I'll read you the subhead. Chris the sheep who made headlines for the record-breaking weight of his wool has died. It was essentially an obituary for Chris the sheep.

Chris the sheep, who was Australian, attention listeners, down under, was found wandering around with five years worth of growth of wool on him that weighed some 90 pounds when it was shaved off. 90 pounds. Wow. Anyway, what we're after here is the headline for the obituary for Chris the sheep who made headlines for his record-breaking wool. David, what is ABC News's strained pun headline.

Okay, I got lots of thoughts here. Let us have them. The first thing, I mean, I think you basically said it. I don't think there's any way to work like the weight of the wool in your shoulders into this. That's good. But that was the first thing that popped into my head.

I don't think there's any like black sheep or, okay, listen, I know that this isn't right because I just feel like it would be largely inappropriate headline, but like lambs to the slaughter has to, like, is definitely is the closest thing here.

I thought you were going to go sheep the sheep of the dead. Oh, that's really good. So wait, we're just looking for, but this is a pun. So like lambs of the slaughter probably wouldn't be one. Is it, the wolf thing. Say about someone who is, that's funny. Say it's something you might say about someone who has recently passed.

Something you might wish for them. Good. Something the undertaker might say about a recently vanquished opponent. Oh, oh. I was going to try to do an undertaker impression, but okay, I'll do it. Is the answer, Rest in fleece. Rest in fleece.

That is correct. Thank you. Thank you. That was really good. Rest and fleece is fantastic. Rest and fleece feels like one that there was just someone on the copy desk waiting excitedly for a sheep to die for like 15 years so that they could put that in the headline. Yeah.

Oh, they were, that was spike in the football. Let me tell you, ABC News. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Alameda. Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. The official country of the press box is Australia. We're back Tuesday, bright and early with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian. David, everybody hates me. And I just wonder if there's a point where you say, you know what? I don't want this. What? I'm done. What?

What? Yeah, no, that's right. This is where we are. What do you feel about that? I'm just going to keep having this conversation to advance my feeling of superior order, even though it makes me sort of, renders me sort of helpless in the process. Whoa, everybody hates me. Like young men going to the drugstore to try to buy condoms, they're just like,

where's the condom section? He's like, do you mean, dressed in fleece? What? Trojan!