The Press Box - Iowa Is Here, the Barstool Sale, and Covering the Super Bowl | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker talk about the final lead-up to the Iowa caucuses (01:55), the selling off of a major portion of Barstool Sports (17:45), and all of the goings-on from the media frenzy that is covering the Super Bowl in Miami (37:04). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, a couple of former Deadspin writers reunited this week to write a Super Bowl blog. What I want to know is, if you could get the cast back together from any defunct website or periodical, which would you pick? Oh, wow. We're getting the gang back together. Okay, so, I mean, it's attempting just to say Gawker, although that's a little bit. I mean, if we had like the biggest names of Gawker, that'd be pretty fun. What else is out of business? It would be great. College humor would be really great.

The all. God, I said Gagher didn't even say the all. The all, if we could, I mean, that would be, that would be, that would be, epic. I'm not sure who's going to be supporting that, but, like, somebody's got to fund that. I know, I know spy magazine is not a, is not a website, but, like, can we, can we go down that? Can we just, can we just turn that over in our brains for a minute? Just get, I don't know what that would look like in 2020, but Jesus. You probably look like Gockers, to be honest.

honest. The thing I want to know is, do they have to be living the participants here? I mean, is Tom Wolfe walking through that door if we get 60s 70s Esquire back together? If not, the New York Herald Tribune's, like, Super Bowl coverage is going to be fantastic this year. I cannot wait for, like, Pringles to sponsor that. I mean, I know it's a huge Homer pick, but, you know, we got to say Grantland at some point in here, right? Oh, yeah. As much as we can bear to say that, let's do it. We are the lucky magazine of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots and lots to get to today. We'll talk about a chunk of barstool sports getting sold to a casino. We'll give you an update on the Senate trial of Donald Trump. Plus BuzzFeed Ben is leaving to write a media column. Covering the Super Bowl is deeply weird. And the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, we got to start with Iowa because somehow there are only three days.

until the Iowa caucuses. Yeah. I know when people say time is suddenly going so fast, that's like the ultimate cliche, but what the hell happened to the last year? I have no idea. Let me start you off with polling guru Nate Silver's odds as of this morning. Bernie Sanders 2 to 1.

Joe Biden 2 to 1. Pete Buttigieg 6 to 1. Elizabeth Warren 9 to 1 and Amy Klobuchar 40 to 1 Silver adds I do think people are neglecting how close Iowa remains both between the top

two Bernie and Biden specifically in the top 4 to 5 overall he also adds in 8 of the last 11 Iowa caucuses there have been major differences between what the polls said now and the actual results I love it personally when the media

doesn't know what the hell is going on Yeah. And we're all kind of groping through the dark together, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, I tend to trust Nate Silver. I think sometimes, you know, as follow-up tweets, leave a little bit to be desired in terms of clarity.

I mean, I'm not quite sure what to make of the statement that we're neglecting how close Iowa remains between the top four or five overall when the distance between four and five is nine to one to one. numerically, it's compelling. You ask where the time went. Some of this time, obviously, in recent weeks, has gone to the Senate impeachment proceedings. And there's definitely, you know, some senators who are counted amongst that number, three out of the five of them who have not been spending much time, if at all, in Iowa lately.

And, you know, it's easy to get lost in the sort of malaise of what's going on in Washington. significant as it may be. But yeah, I mean, I'm loathe to get too excited about just horse race coverage. But I guess we're at that time of the year where we're talking about it a horse race. And this is, you know, the most interesting thing, I guess, that we've been talking about for the last several election cycles is how well the actual numbers compared to the polls, you know, right on the doorstep of the elections. I've never, I've never been that averse to horse race political coverage. I'm especially not when the race is about to start. Yeah, it's true.

It's now okay to talk about who's going to win because it's really important on Monday. To your list of things that have been oddly crowding out Iowa, I'd add Kobe, and I'd also add the Super Bowl that's about to happen. Yeah. You know, you could argue on Sunday night, Iowa's going to be no higher than like fourth on a lot of people's radars. And I guess what I wonder is,

and Nate himself has kind of tweeted about this, is how much effect will that have of pushing Iowa to the side, right? Normally, that would be a big enough story that would be everybody would be pretty locked in on it, media-wise. And we are kind of stumbling through a week or two here where I don't think that's been the case at all. Even put together this pod this morning, I was like, oh, wow, I got to think about Iowa again. Yeah. So I don't have any idea how that plays, but I'm guessing we're going to get a, something from silver or someone that's going to say,

you know what? Everyone taking their eye off the ball is why X1 and candidate Y lost. That could definitely be true. I was trying to play this out, do a little game theory for myself, before we started the podcast. And I was wondering if, with everything else going, everything else that you just mentioned, that's sort of crowding out Iowa in the national consciousness,

if something really kind of unexciting happened, if Biden won by 5%, you know, and everybody else just sort of lined up as near or exactly what we kind of expect them this far out, is that is that unexciting enough that it would sort of be, it would sort of even out as a non-event? Well, I mean, I find it hard to imagine that if Biden wins in any way, that the media consensus will be anything but Biden's inevitability. but it is interesting. It does seem like there must,

it does seem like there is some sort of way that this plays out where we just sort of shrug our shoulders and move on to New Hampshire. I'm not exactly sure what the outcome that would lead us there is, though. Yeah, I think a really tight three or four-way race would probably get us to let's let's let New Hampshire settle it or at least settle the next round, probably. I also think what your point with Biden is interesting. I think there's going to be a freak out. no matter who wins this.

If Bernie wins, the centress who have already been freaking out for a week plus are going to freak out some more. If Biden wins this, there's going to be a big thing among Democrats, not just Bernie Sanders supporters, but I think all Democrats of going, oh my gosh, are we really hitching everything to this guy who has shown himself to be a very iffy campaigner throughout this thing, despite the fact that he might actually win Iowa. Let's go through these scenarios for a second, because I think it's worth. exploring them in detail. If Bernie wins, I go back to this Dave Weigel tweet where he said, when Elizabeth Warren was the frontrunner, this is around October, the favored Democratic way of attacking

her was to say, at least Bernie's honest about his plans, right? That's me talking. Here's Weigel. He says, one extremely funny way for this primary to end would be Dems building up Sanders to take out Warren, followed by Sanders winning. So they spent weeks saying, hey, you're for Medicare for all but you're not honest about paying for at least

Bernie's the only honest man on this stage and all they did was drive up Bernie's reputation and then Bertie winds up winning the primary. That would just be incredible. Yeah, I agree. And it's not for nothing that like, you know, people are lining up to go after Sanders right now. Whereas before it was sort of the you know, a moderate liberal whisper campaign

if not maybe whispering in a slightly a voice slightly above a whisper. A stage whisper, yeah. Now we have the Washington Examiner comes out today with this with this just absolutely nutso attack that Sanders praised George Wallace in 1972, which is like objectively untrue, you know, I mean if it, when taken in context, you know, they're also, I mean, the examiner is also rolling out stories about Biden's attacks on Sanders and, you know, as if that's the most significant news of the day.

And then we have this Club for Growth attack on Bernie Sanders, too. Do you want to play that audio? Yeah, let's listen. This is the new Club for Growth commercial airing in Iowa about Bernie Sanders. Sanders wants to be our 46th president, but he's nothing like the rest. More radical than Obama on health care. Bernie's plan gives government health insurance to everyone. His socialist Green New Deal, even bigger than the New Deal, transforming the economy to meet extreme environmental standards.

And at 79, he'd be our oldest president ever. Even his age is extreme. Too old and too liberal. Club for Growth Action is responsible for the content of this advertising. I mean, if we want to keep talking game theory, I'm seriously, I mean, this is, I'm sitting here struggling trying to figure out of this, if we're supposed to take from this that the club for growth is so terrified of a potential Bernie Sanders candidate to either they're sticking their neck out there in the Democratic primary or if they're convinced that, is that mean they're convinced that Donald Trump is going to lose? So now is the time to act to influence the opposition? Or are they just actively pro Joe Biden? I mean, it's very, it's very confused by, by. their engagement right now. And I'll, I'll, I'll do you one more move in 19D chess here. I saw some people on Twitter essentially saying, all that ad did was remind people what

they liked about Bernie Sanders. So the club for growth is trying to get Bernie to win the primary by this weird backhanded move so that Bernie will lose to Donald Trump. I mean, I don't know. That's like, that I think is a little too clever for the club for growth. But, hey, it's a weird time. So that's if Bernie wins. What if Joe Biden wins Iowa?

To me, my takeaway would be despite extremely intense media skepticism from liberal Twitter, from mainstream journalists, Joe Biden's bet worked. He really didn't change anything about his campaign. He said at the beginning of this, I'm not going to get drawn into fights about my record. I'm not going to get drawn into fights about who's the biggest lefty. I'm going to go straight down the middle, more or less, and just be Uncle Joe. And don't you think if he comes out, victorious in Iowa, a state where many people had written him off remember and said, oh, no, he's going to have to rely on South Carolina, that he was proven right, as unlikely as that seems. Yeah, that's undeniable.

If he wins, that will certainly be the lesson or one of the lessons. I think, you know, we've said it before. I think the power, the momentum of being the presumptive frontrunner in a field as crowded as this one was when it started is a really powerful thing in the modern media age when, you know, not to harp on it, but when so much the coverage is horse race coverage, when you're told over and over that Joe Biden is winning in the polls, that's a very powerful thing for the Joe Biden campaign. But see, I feel we were told over and over that Joe Biden was a weak frontrunner. I thought we got some of the Joe Biden's ahead, but a lot of it was that Joe Biden's ahead. but not by as much as Hillary was ahead. But he walked in with such high name recognition, such high approval rating.

I mean, his numbers or his poll numbers are always really, really good. And if there, I mean, if you want to, yeah, talk about, you know, New Hampshire, Iowa, vis-a-vis South Carolina, then, I mean, sure, obviously there's going to be like discrepancies in polling. But I just think, you know, I think that you're right. I think the main lesson is his gambit worked. I mean, that he has presented himself as sufficiently as presidential material. I do wonder if he wins, if we're going to, I mean, if it's going to be the inevitability

storyline that I mentioned before, or if this is just, it just sort of signals the campaign reset that anybody that decides to stay in the campaign is now, now we're still just sort of choosing who's going to unseat Biden because, like you said, I think that his inadequacy as a candidate will still be the conversation, part of the conversation. But you're right about what the overarching story will be if he, if he wins. I kind of find it hard to believe that any of the four front runners wouldn't make it to New Hampshire. Maybe there's a really dire Pete Buttigieg result that doesn't get him there. But I think everybody treaches on to New Hampshire.

I do think it's not as much stop Biden, though that would certainly be part of it. It's also just survival at that point. Because when the front runner wins, what are you doing here? Yeah. Right? You know, what hope, I mean, the whole Warren candidacy was, you know, based on her winning one, if not both of these first two primaries. The whole Bernie, the whole Bernie's not just going to be the lefty guy everyone loves is based on him winning. And everything's based on everybody winning.

That sounds like such, that's like the most basic thing in the world. But there's no, it's just hard to imagine any of those people having much of a rationale other than, you know, stay alive. By the way, I did find this story interesting. There's one change in the Biden campaign is essentially procedural. Shane Goldmacher wrote this in New York Times that Biden's campaign in Super PAC supporting him are on pace to churn through nearly $9 million on television ads in Iowa ahead of the caucuses.

Biden also planted himself in the state this week, seizing on the Senate impeachment trial and President Trump's rally in Des Moines on Thursday night. So what that did was sort of draw money that Biden would have been spending in, states down the line. So Biden is putting a ton of stock into winning Iowa after again to me at first kind of suggesting, oh, I don't need Iowa, right? I've still got South Carolina there if this doesn't go. So Biden is Biden needs to win. He could survive not winning, but his fortunes, literal fortunes like in

money, get really complicated if he doesn't win on Monday night, which is kind of a fascinating subplot. David not satisfied with being tried in the Senate. Donald Trump got mad that there was a political thing happening in this country that wasn't explicitly about him. So he went to Iowa on Thursday. Here's Joe Biden responding to that. Welcome to Donald Trump's world. Hope is down. Lies of the truth.

Allies are enemies. Everything is through the looking glass. Look, Trump and I have already gone one round with each other on health care. in 2018, 114 states for 65 candidates. I took on Trump all over the country, and we beat him. In fact, we beat like a drum. All right, David, on that note, let's go to the Overward 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. Please send your nominees to At the Press Box Pod, where they are always gratefully received. Just going to warn you, all three of the overworks this week, involve semi-obscure pop culture pulls. Just if you're if you're not over the age of like 35, maybe fast forward.

First off, David's star-crossed presidential candidate, John Delaney, ended his star-crossed presidential campaign this morning. It was an overworked Twitter joke to post that gift from the movie Airplane where the bald guy is pulling out the cords and saying, whoopsie. Thanks to Brendan Fitzpatrick for that one. Also in the news this week, California Attorney General Xavier Bacera tweeted, we're announcing the arrest of 10 individuals

for allegedly defrauding $700,000 from Cal Recycle by importing containers sold in other states into California in order to redeem them for cash. Apparently, the redemption rate was not as high, so they brought them to California where the redemption rate was higher. It was an overword Twitter joke to reference the 1996 episode of Seinfeld called the bottle deposit, where apparently Kramer did the same thing. I don't remember that episode, but it exists. Thanks to Peter Hartlob.

I told you, we're reaching this week. And just wait for this one. Because finally, David, I don't know if you've watched a Brooklyn Nets home game on TV this year. Or like every other NBA fan apparently just watched the clip on. Twitter so that your ratings point didn't register. But the Nets have that black and white thing going on their court where it looks like

you're watching a Bogart movie from the 40s. Yeah. It was an overward Twitter joke to say watching the Nets at home this year is like watching the movie Pleasantville. Thanks to Nathan Matisse. If you reached deep into 90s and beyond pop culture, congrats. You made the overword

Twitter joke of the week. Let us do the notebook dump. Because we got sports media news. On Wednesday, PIN National Gaming announced it was purchasing a 36% stake in Barstool for $163 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which valued the company at $450 million. Wow. It's probably good to be skeptical of those numbers, at least slightly skeptical. Yeah. But here is normally shy barstool leader Dave Portnoy

making the rare triumphant statement. So it's been a whirlwind, yeah, it's been a whirlwind 24 hours. I flew back. That's why I obviously missed radio. And the reason I want to keep it so private is because in case you haven't, and it hasn't happened this time, in case you haven't noticed, there is a faction of people who really don't care for barstool sport.

I've noticed that. On the internet? Yes. So I didn't want those people. I don't like it's been crazy, though. It hasn't not this. No, it's been all positive. Well, that's because one of their main outlets just died.

That's true. That's true. So, but the thought was, you know what, if there is going to be, every time something good happens at Barstool, generally, the people don't like us stamp their feet and complain. I didn't want Penn to be hit with those complaints before everything was like done, done. So once it's done done done, complain, it's done done. So that's why we're trying to keep it so, so tight. David, we've been looking for a media doctor Manhattan to swoop down and save us all. Does it turn out the answer is, Checks Notes, a brick and mortar casino?

Yes. I mean, this was my first thought, right? I mean, I don't know that that's what's going to save us all. But it is, I mean, this definitely has, I mean, congratulations to Barstool, to everybody involved for their, you know, very, very padded pocketbooks right now. I mean, this is, this is a... That's just from David, by the way. Yes. That's a... Not on behalf of the whole press box. You have a hundred million dollars in your pocket or whatever it is. I mean, that's a, you know, I mean, or the valuation of a hundred million dollars. We should be careful about figures here. Um, you know, I mean, that's... You're definitely put people there richer than they

were yesterday. We'll just say that. There is a very much a little like tech rose invent city buses element to this whole thing, right? We're like, we are not too far removed from Barstool saying, you know, we're going to be the new ESPN. And it kind of turns out that they're the new ESPN zone, right? I mean, is that the right way of looking at it? It's, which is, which is not, I mean, I guess that probably sounds harsh. But, but, I mean, seriously, it is, this is what we keep coming back to.

I mean, we had Sports Illustrated being taken, being stripped for parts and being resold as like, you know, a logo on a fanny pack. And the more that we sort of like live with this new media world, you start to wonder, is it like you just said? Are we talking about changing the landscape to a new, you know, post-technological future? Are we talking about brick and mortar shops? I mean, it's a weird place we're in.

And this is a lot less dire than Sports Illustrated. Oh, of course, of course. Presumably, the casino actually wants, God bless him. The casino actually wants Barstool to remain in its current form, right? Or something like it. It's not like they want to dismantle it. I guess my first thought was, wow, a media company in 2020 isn't completely worthless.

Yeah. And in this case, I guess we can ascribe Barstool's worth to a combination of its stooliness and its podcasts and its interest in gambling. Would that be the three legs of the Iron Triangle? Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm not a stoolie. I'm not an avid reader or listener or whatever else. But I do think that you can, I mean, stooliness, you can spin that out into the, like, legitimate power of social media that they harness, right?

I mean, it's not just podcasting. It's Twitter and Instagram and just kind of like new media content vaguely defined. Certainly they're very into gambling. They also have this big component of their presence now, I mean, for the past couple years, their radio network, which is, I think we discussed before, is, kind of was, you know, maybe step one and then sort of edging towards brick and mortar, at least like terrestrial, I mean, obviously it's not terrestrial radio, but sort of the, the old school concept of what a media empire could be. But yeah, I mean, listen, that's, that is their value. I think you defined it pretty

well. And I think that that's the, that's the bet, pardon the turn of phrase, that Penn National is making. I mean, this isn't a, I mean, this is a calculated bet. that gambling is going to be legalized in, you know, 20, 30, 35 states in the next several years, and that the client base for the future of gambling is going to be big enough and robust enough that, you know, the new generation of potential gamblers will, you know, identify with barstool more so than they would identify with whatever else Penn National had to offer and potentially compete with the, you know, standard bearers of gambling, of the gambling, gambling world.

You know, the Caesar's palaces and all that. Right. And they're much smaller, right? So they have everything to gain by saying, we're that kind of sports book. We're not, we're not,

we're the kind of all those guys you like to read and listen to and all that stuff. I agree. I probably should have said, when I said the three legs of the Iron Triangle, I probably should have said the three legs of the stool, pun intended, just just backing up on my puns there.

Here's my second thought on Barstool. We do this thing when someone or something is successful. We stop evaluating what they actually do and say, and say, hey, well, it's sold for a lot of money. No, you know, that's, you know, you got to hand it. You really got to hand it to them. There is no reason to do this. Whatever you found loathsome about Barstool before the sale is still loathsome. And you're not getting any of that money, Mr. Media Analyst.

so, you know, if you thought poorly of that empire and the way they've built it, feel free to continue to think poorly about it. Yes. Because, you know, I know, like I said, we do this thing all the time. Oh, they're rich. Well, okay. But they're the same guys with just more money. Why is that good?

In some ways, that's, in some ways, we should take the opposite lesson from that, right? I mean, I know it's nice not to have. A media company basically just thrown in the trash, as it happens all the time now. But the idea that all that stuff worked is also is kind of depressing to me. As you say, David Shoemaker says, congrats to Barstool. There we go. I'm bidding it all on you. Elsewhere in the media transactions column, David, Ben Smith is leaving BuzzFeed to become a media columnist at the New York Times.

right in the middle of the election. Smith, of course, has been editor-in-chief at BuzzFeed since 2012. He built out the news operation there. They had a ton of big moments, most recently probably, publishing the steel dossier. First, interesting thing about Ben to me is people who run new media organizations, the company tends, or I should say the writers tend to take on in many cases, the image of the person running it, right?

You could say that about Simmons. Not that we all write like Bill, but, you know, we have Bill hired us because we have certain qualities of his, right? And we probably are allowed to flash that here maybe more than we would somewhere else. The same thing happened with Ben Smith. He was just a totally different person, right?

He was this aggressive reporter guy. And when you saw all those people talking about him on Twitter this week that have flourished, over there. It's a lot of people generally speaking in the Ben Smith image. And that's interesting to me

because web journalism I think is really was really good for a period at just creating take artists, I say that admiringly, creating people

who would write really good essays. You know, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to do this. And then later on there was this sort of movement. I think you could probably find it at the Daily Beast.

You could probably find it at talking points memo to an extent of building reporters at organizations that, as Smith rightfully said, could compete with the big boys and girls at the New York Times and Washington Post.

Yeah, I mean, listen, of all of the things that we cover, we talked about Spuds McKinsey earlier this week, I don't know that anything has made me feel more old than the sort of like realization that I remember very clearly being stunned that Ben Smith was going to get the BuzzFeed the head of BuzzFeed News job when he did.

How long ago was that, eight years ago or something? I think that's right. I mean, at the time, it was just like, what is this politics blogger doing in this startup world? I'm sure I was envious. Like, it just seemed like, but I couldn't quite wrap my head around at the time, but I think what you're saying is a lot of the reason why, that it sort of signaled a paradigm shift in the way that the internet was going to be going to create reporting. And, you know, for better or worse, I mean, in his farewell to BuzzFeed note that was,

you know, that he, I think he, Ben Smith put it on the internet, put it on Twitter himself, he said that, you know, he had all the confidence in BuzzFeed that all the people there had, you know, were firmly committed to the news organization. And I believe that they are at this moment in time. But for whatever happens next to BuzzFeed, no matter what direction it goes, it is very significant that he was able to operate, that he was able to grow this enterprise in the way that he did, that he would build it up as a news organization despite, I mean, despite everything that came before,

all of the way, I mean, like you said, the way the internet worked, despite the fact that he was operating with the name BuzzFeed News. You know, they could have picked a different name for this wing, you know. And he, and they did it. You know, they did change the way that we, that reporters are built or created and developed, online. The BuzzFeed has had layoffs within the last year. They've had, Ben has had his moments with the union over there pretty interestingly. A couple thoughts on his new job at the New York Times.

One is, I would love for his media column to actually be a column. There's a strange thing at the New York Times. It happened with his predecessor in that column, Jim Rutenberg. It's happened on the sports page where somebody has a column and I never know quite when they're actually going to write it. And it seems to appear extremely irregularly. And like the whole point of a column is that it comes out at a certain time. And there's a regularity to it. Ben has never been someone in his career who's been unproductive. So I just look forward to that actually happening regularly as opposed to the person kind of being,

and I know Rutenberg was doing other things. all that stuff, but I'm just like, I want to, I want a column. Yeah. That's one. Thought number two and jump in here at any time. The Times already has some pretty great media columns. Amanda Hess writes a great column in the culture pages about the media broadly defined. Ditto Charlie Worsel in the opinion section.

So when we say that the Times has sort of lacked that, I think what they've lacked is like a press column, right? Yes. A column that's about, but again, I just don't, that distinction is interesting to me and to other olds out there. But I don't know that anybody, you know, under the age of 30, really makes much of a distinction between the media, the press, and the thing I read on online, the internet. Oh, man, are we going to have to, like, reevaluate the purpose of this podcast now that you've just like, don't you feel confident in me as a podcast host about the media? having burped out that that ball of yarn. That was fantastic.

I co-sign everything that you said, though. I mean, I agree about the sort of impenetrability, the paralysis of choice sometimes or I guess the blindness of choice when it comes to the New York Times op-ed section or opinion section. I hope that his platform matches the volume of this kind of announcement.

But yeah, I mean, I do hope that there is a, that he covers media and they allow him to cover journalism in a way that is helpful and informative. The other thing I would say about the New York Times media column, the prestige is great. Then the question becomes,

what will the Times allow you to say? Or maybe put a different way, what will you allow yourself to say in the New York Times? Now, Smith is sort of built as a reporter he told Isaac Chotner this in a New Yorker Q&A. He says, I think a good story always breaks news. I hope I can do that. I also think every good story makes an argument.

I guess I'm skeptical of the difference between reporting and analysis, and I think good stories usually contain reporting and analysis. All that sounds fair. But there's different ways to write this, right? There's the Jack Schaefer acupuncture style of media column. And then there's that one we read newspapers, where it's kind of like an analytical news, paper piece. It has a couple of quotes. It argues something. But again, that's not all that

different to me than the New York Times news pages. So I'm just interesting to see how that's going to come out and how ferocious it can be. I agree. You know, the Times media columnist has the potential to be more significant to the Times and certainly to other media outlets than the Times Zone Ombudsman. You know, I mean, in the sense that, They have a voice and a platform that's separate from the institution and certainly more widely read. But it does. It remains to be seen to what degree they'll allow him to have a voice and to what degree he'll exercise that opportunity. Let's spend a second talking about John Bolton because we seem to have reached this point in the Senate trial of Donald Trump,

where Bolton, the former national security advisor, has something he wants to tell us. and the Republicans, at least as we record this, look like they're not going to let him say it during Trump's Senate trial. There will be no witnesses called, we think, at this point. So I've seen the question asked on Twitter today. Why doesn't John Bolton just call a reporter and say whatever he has to say? That's a great question. And if you want this information to be public and,

do influence his trial at all. That's one thing. Here's the thing I want to hit you with, David, let's say John Bolton is ready to spew to a reporter. Who's he going to pick? Because his old pals at Fox News have just been like roasting him 24-7 and have totally turned on him. So who do you call if you're John Bolton at this point?

Well, I mean, Bolton's old school, right? I mean, despite his ideological divergence from, you know, like whatever, the editorial board of the New York Times, I'm sure that he would, or the Washington Post. I'm sure he would still feel slightly, you know, excited to be above the fold in the front page of either of those papers. The Wall Street Journal, I think, is a very likely outlet. But it's a good question, and why he doesn't just call and let everything out. I mean, I feel like we get into conversations about the book publishing industry way too frequently on this show.

But this is really, I mean, there are many conservative voices who are out there trying to discredit John Bolton because, of the the synchronicity between these leaks and, you know, the impending release of this book, you know, the Amazon page materialized soon after the first New York Times story popped up. I don't know that there's any reason to discredit his story. I'm not sure that he would put himself out there and lie just simply to sell books, but certainly this is part of a marketing campaign. I mean, certainly everything is a marketing campaign. I hate to be so, you know, broad about it, but come on. I mean, and, you know, why wouldn't he go and tell everything?

I mean, I think that you can pretty much track the timeline here. He made himself available if, you know, subpoenaed, I think probably around the time that he put the finishing touches on this book or, like, you know, submitted the manuscript to the, to the White House. And I think that, you know, he's like any wise marketer is going to leave some stuff for, you know, so you have to actually have to go shell out your 25 bucks to read the hardcover. why doesn't he borrow a page from Barstool and just have an emergency press conference online? Can you see him just stepping up to a camera and just, I got something to say?

Just doing like 20 minutes? I think that's what I want at John Bolton at this point. Yeah, I mean, the whole John Bolton thing and, you know, I don't know how deep we want to get into the whole impeachment proceeding or the Senate trial that's going on right now. I mean, the New York Times did report that today that the, that Bolton was, you know, the Bolton's book has reveals that Trump was talking about withholding aid to the Ukraine, or to Ukraine earlier than we previously knew. And, you know, the headline that they, that at least appeared on my phone, I think did a fairly good job of trying to state the news instead of just stating the, again,

horse racy stakes. But, I mean, there's nothing that really says more about the sad state of, you know, political media right now in the world that we live in, then the fact that we're covering, I mean, there's three major news networks, wall to wall covering whether or not Republicans are going to vote for John Bolton to testify before the Senate and covering the content of what his testimony will certainly be almost none. All that we're hearing about is like vote wrangling, you know, I mean, like whether or not Mitch McConnell can, and he did successfully prohibit John Bolton from testifying and the Republicans cheering and everybody ready to, you know, getting ready to, you know,

getting ready to move on from this trial. You know, what John Bolton's book is going to say, the truth that John Bolton would presumably have said in front of the Senate, I think is much more significant than any of that. But, you know, it's sort of every, you know, it's been said a million times. Final segment, David, on covering the Super Bowl, you emailed me this week, very enthused to talk about why we see so many stories this time of year

about what we eat during the Super Bowl. There's stories about people doing Google searches to find, what is your favorite snack? Over on NBC was like Barstools Big Cat talking to Chris Sims. By the way, the ultimate Super Bowl week content. About hierarchy of snacks or something like that. Do you have a theory of why Super Bowl food content is so pervasive? Well, it's something that really impacts our lives in a real way.

You also have, like, probably one of the greatest concentrations of media in one place at one time trying desperately to, or even not even just in Radio Row, people, the highest, a huge concentration of media covering the Super Bowl and trying to find new angles to cover it. There's a lot of pop culture editors out there who are trying to find ways into this, you know, this, like, traffic bonanza. But as we have this conversation, it occurs to me. I was dropping my kid off at school the other day and on the way back. After I had already thought about talking about this in the press box, I heard just a morning drive-time radio duo have this same conversation and get into a mock fight about whether or not, you know, pigs in a blanket were really a national obsession.

And I don't know if this is some, if this amounts to any sort of broad statement about media today or whatever. But, like, that's totally normal fair. pardon the pun, that's totally normal morning drive time radio fare. I think what's new is that like, relatively new, is that in the past five or ten years or whatever, like, morning drive time radio fare is like equal to, I mean, is the same thing as what like, you know, we consume in, in quote unquote, like regular media. And as somebody who is currently surrounded by the ultimate in regular radio fair,

I did a little walk around with Roger Sherman. I think we put it on the ringer's Instagram account. today just gave him a tour of Radio Row. And by the way, thanks very much to the viewer who sent us a message. Why is Roger walking around with his lawyer? That's very much appreciated. It is just amazing. And by the way, the ringer, which has a nice setup here on Radio Row, is no different.

It's just any content will do, baby, right? This is all it's about is just keeping the crank turning this. week because anything that says Super Bowl is a winner, you know? It's funny because you and I have laughed at how the media, it's not only if it's changed, but it's a little more obviously commodified where whatever TV show is happening, whatever world event is happening, you just need stuff about that. And it doesn't matter. The Super Bowl has been doing that for 54 years now, right?

As long as it says Super Bowl, that's great. And I would not be shocked if some of those food stories are sort of ghost written by big avocado or whatever the interest group is. Is that, is that, aren't the, what are the avocados from Mexico? Is that a, is that like the club for growth of avocados? Wait, are you telling me that all this food coverage is corrupt, that it's all coming from some like, like, I think it's, I think it is being pushed by something. I think it's like, hey, you've got some crazy stats on how much guacamole everybody's eating. I think big avocado's behind that. Oh, my gosh.

I think they're throwing that out. I just changed your whole world. Wait, so the one that I heard on the radio, though, that said that pigs in a blanket were leading the charts. Is there a pigs in a blanket lobby and related question, how can I get a job at the pigs in a blanket lobby? Because I cannot imagine a better life than that. I was going to say that's John Bolton's next job. and it gets thrown out of polite conservative circles. By the way, Super Bowl cliche,

we'll probably talk more about Super Bowl coverage on Monday, but Super Bowl cliche I am absolutely ready for. Kyle Shanahan, coach of the 49ers, his dad is Mike Shanahan, who was a coach of multiple NFL teams. I will bet you $1 billion fake dollars that a reporter will ask Mike Shanahan, were you more nervous coaching in the Super Bowl yourself?

Or are you more nervous watching your son coach in the Super Bowl? And he will answer because he's required to answer this way. Oh, this makes me way more nervous. This is way more nerve-wracking watching my son coach. That exchange will happen during the NFC championship game. It will 100% happen this week. I will bet, just bet you anything. You can be the, if I lose, you all get to host the press box next week.

Just to take that to the bank. That's my barstool-style gambling content. Is that a reward? David Schumacher guess is a strain pun headline. It's a reward. To ever David Schumaker guess is a strain pun headline. Last Friday's headline attached to a story about a person claiming

the Philadelphia Flyers mascot took a swipe at them was innocent until proven gritty. As usual, our listeners were funnier than we are. Matthew Cox and Jim Babcock said it should have been, you have the right to remain violent. Yes. Ryan

suggested gritty in clink, like pretty and pink but gritty in clink. Love it. Today's headline is not really a headline. It's a tweet, but it could have been a headline, so all the same rules apply. It was

tweeted by the volatile mermaid aka O'Noshy Twin. Thank God Jim's not here. That would go right into the end of the show. She posted two screen grabs from Fox News, one from a year ago and one from today. Shockingly,

both segments were about Hillary Clinton. not impeachment, not the actual contestants in Iowa Hillary Clinton. The volatile mermaid wrote a very funny, strained pun about Fox's devotion to Hillary.

One might say it's undying devotion to Hillary. What was the strain pun tweet headline? Is it like weird hill to die on? Is that where is that? Oh, we're done. Is that it? Folks. Yeah. Wow, that's my best win.

in a long time. Wow. We just canceled the segment. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Erica Cervantes and Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Steve Allman. Programming note, folks,

the Iowa caucuses are Monday and we're back that night shortly after we get a winner. More lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Later, Brian.