The Press Box - Iran Takes, David Stern Obits, and the NFL Playoffs | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the media fallout from the airstrike that killed Iranian spymaster Qassem Soleimani (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (24:45), the obituaries for the late, great NBA commissioner David Stern (28:00), the first weekend of the NFL playoffs (39:45), and the coaching drama in Dallas (50:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. We've published some great episodes in the month of December, including a rewatchable's with Quentin Tarrantino on Dunkirk. Sean Fennessey sat down with Greta Gerwig to talk about her new film Little Women on The Big Picture, and Adam Sandler and Kevin Garnett appeared on the Bill Simmons podcast to talk about their newest film on Cut Jems. Happy New Year from The Ringer. David, at the Golden Globes on Sunday,

host Ricky Jervais' shame celebrities who, dared to be political. What I want to know is, should celebrities stick to acting? It was the great stick to sports moment of Hollywood, and yet, like, even the most, like, politically, the people who are most politically aligned with, you know, Hollywood, I think we're probably pretty more aligned in that moment with Ricky Dervais, right? I mean, is anybody, like, just really eager to hear, you know, walking Phoenix, hey, not to take private planes or

Brad Pitt and telling you to go do something nice for somebody if you get the opportunity. See, I think I want that to be like 20% of an award show. Like I wouldn't want that to be the whole Oscars coming up

but I'd want some of that in the Oscars. Like I don't, it doesn't have to be Joaquin Phoenix talking about private planes, but I guess just the idea of like maybe it's actually Ricky. Maybe it's like I want host with an agenda. Yeah.

Host with something to say, right? Mm-hmm. I think that the most, the most, like, treakly, unlook-a-able part of any, of any acceptance speech is when the actor tries to relate the role or the film into some sort of, like, larger moral. And in some ways, going political, sort of absolves you of that. Like, you don't have to be, you don't have to make that ridiculous sort of, like, correlation between your dumb acting job and, like, you know, the larger significance of it.

So, I mean, I would sort of, I would prefer that my acting. be forced to make their own jobs seem more important than they are. I mean, in acting, I'm not trying to make light of it. I love movies and television and everything else and could never do what they do and love watching it. But I would have much more rather heard Joaquin Phoenix explain why the Joker script meant so much to him and how it's, you know, going to affect good, you know, change in the world on its own.

Speaking on behalf of the think peace industry, don't we need some political content from these award shows to let everybody in on the act. Like National Review and the Washington Post editorial page cannot talk about Kate Blanchett's dress. That's not going to get you an 800-word editorial. But you can talk about what Ricky said. You can talk about those nefarious liberal celebrities. That absolutely gets you to think peace nirvana.

So, you know, look, David, it's a tough time for the journalism industry. There's not a lot of jobs to be at. hat out there. It's true. Award ceremonies. Put us back to work, baby. That's why we need you. We are the cable ace awards of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers. You've got Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here. Lots to get to today. We'll talk about the obituaries for the late great NBA commissioner David Stern. We'll talk about the stories the media was dogpiling during the first weekend of the NFL playoffs. All of that plus the

overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, I want to start with Iran because last week when Donald Trump ordered the airstrike that killed Iranian spymaster Qasem Soleimani, there was an opening in the media for a voice that would sum up the growing anti-war sentiment

in this country. On Friday, one such voice rose above the din. I bring you Tucker Carlson. Our government exists to defend and promote the interests of American citizens, period. That's why we have a government. So has the killing of Soleimani done that? Maybe. No one in Washington has explained how. Instead, like Ben Sasse, they're telling us what an

awful person he was. He clearly was. So, that's irrelevant. Meanwhile, it's pretty clear that things could start to move in the wrong direction pretty quickly. We're praying they don't, but they could. How do we know that? Because we've seen it before. We fought quite a number of wars around the Middle East in recent decades. We attacked Saddam Hussein twice, as you know, in the end we killed him. We invaded an occupied Afghanistan. We toppled Omar Gaddafi in Libya. We fought ISIS and Syria and then for some reason stuck around. We're still there. We joined humanitarian missions in Lebanon and Somalia. Our special forces have been quietly fighting in Yemen, Pakistan, Niger. Who knows where else? Many other places. In every single place,

each of these conflicts has turned out to be longer and bloodier and more expensive than we were promised in the first place. The benefits, often they've been non-existent. A lot of lectures about how the people were killing deserved to die. Certainly they did. Hope that makes you feel better. What do the American people think about all of this? Not that anyone cares. According to CNN, some of the Kairons you can see on Carlson's show have included benefits of recent wars have been non-existent. Or how will a new conflict make us more secure? Meanwhile, over on Lou Dobbs's Fox business show, you see the more conventionally Foxy Kairon, Trump secures

another Middle East victory. So what, David, should we make of Tucker's get us out of Iran rhetoric? It's interesting. I mean, I don't want to be

too dismissive. Well, okay, I will be. I mean, it's hard to imagine, why not? It's hard to imagine after the past several years of Tucker Carlson on Fox News that this is a purely principled stand. He must see some sort of, you know, profitable wedge issue here. But regardless, you know, it's, it's, this isn't on, you know, in a vacuum, this isn't some like shocking political stance. I mean, this is basically what Trump ran on, right? And what partly, yes. I mean, right. I mean, I mean, I, I mean, I

Obviously, there's, I don't, I mean, there are, there are many, many shades depending on the, the moment in conversation, you know, when you're talking about Trump's foreign policy rhetoric on the campaign trail. But, I mean, this was a big thing that made him stand out from the rest of the pack in the primaries. I mean, this is, this was the, this was the cudgel he used against Jeb Bush. This is, you know, this is what he, I mean, Middle Eastern conflict and getting, and bringing our troops home was a huge issue for him. Now, it also was for Obama, you know, and, and he did, uh, I mean, you could see him straining to try to make, you know, functional governing sense of his own campaign rhetoric, right? As he did during his eight years in office in terms of our role in the Middle East. But, you know, for Trump, this was this was part of the part of the kind of clarion call. I mean, this is what a lot of people who were otherwise, you know, apolitical or unaffiliated attach themselves to. And if everyone is, I mean, and I guess, you know, you can look at the, I guess assassination is the word, and, and say that it's not necessarily connected to, I mean, it will not necessarily precipitate war with Iran, but it's an act of war. And I mean, for Trump, it's either an admission that, you know, he changed his mind, that he wasn't serious about it, that he doesn't know that the, that the, that the, that the, that the, that the, that the, that the, that the, that the, you know, that the. He doesn't know the significance of what he did. I think for Tucker Carlson, though, it's interesting that he's kind of come out against it.

It'll be interesting to see if he, if how many people sort of sign on to his point of view. But politically, it's not a shocking turn of events. This is, you know, what you would expect Tucker Carlson to say if it were any other, you know, if it were a Democratic president. And I guess the interesting thing is that he's just sort of pushing against the Trump administration here. Yeah, I mean, a couple of things is one is if you listen to those segments, he's very reluctant to criticize Trump himself. It's, you know, you're, you've been surrounded. You ran on this, as you said a second ago. And now you've been surrounded by these kind of conventional Republican foreign policy hands who are pushing you toward confrontation. Don't let yourself be pushed. And if you listen to Carlson and even that, that little bit we listen to there, it does sound like, doesn't it that? He's trying to use the president's favorite cable news channel to persuade the president. Like, he is, he is saying, listen to me.

I'm not just doing a cable news bit here, but I'm really trying to convince Trump that this is a bad idea, whether that's for moral reasons that Tucker Carlson believes, whether he thinks that's just a bad political idea for Trump and that Trump will get reelected more easily if he stays out of confrontations like this. Max Taney of the Daily Beast noted in June that Carlson was advising Trump against going to war in Iran sort of digging it against John Bolton and Mike Pompeo at that point to your point about the consistency that is a really fascinating question because Middle East Wars is something that Trump was

all over the place on in the campaign you're right he was definitely trying to project I'm going I'm not going there I'm keeping us out he used it not only as a cudgel against Republicans but against Hillary Clinton in the general election who of course voted for the Iraq war back in the day the um but he was also the guy saying he was going to uh just obliterate ISIS and he was going to kill terrorist families and all those kinds of things um one I guess attempt to kind of square the circle here is uh Asted Herndon the New York Times

report, he tweeted this. All Fox hosts hype, whatever Trump says, isn't really true. Fox is more like a politically correct conductor between the base and the White House. And that includes an America first ideological sector, skeptical of intervention because they would rather wage cultural wars at home. Carlson fits here. It's interesting in terms of him trying to counsel Trump. And you're right. I mean, I think that John Bolton, who has been in the news, obviously the past couple of days for slightly different reasons because he's apparently making himself available if in fact he subpoenaed to testify in the impeachment trial before the Senate. You know, I mean, he has a really interesting role in all this.

And this, you know, this was sort of, you know, Iran was widely seen as his sort of particular fixation. And I think, you know, partly that allowed, you know, the politics of Mike Pompeo and, you know, even Mike Pence. to sort of fly a little bit under the radar. If indeed this is the people that are directly surrounding Trump that are pushing for this decision, you know, it's an interesting showdown, right, between Tucker Carlson and Mike Pompeo or, you know, whoever else is helping Trump call the shots. It's a, I guess, I mean, I don't, I don't mean this is a joke. I mean, we kind of kind of interested to see where Hannity comes down on this, right?

I mean, he might cast the deciding vote. But also, I'm not quite sure how you get out of it. Because, you know, I mentioned this, I think the last time we talked about it, if there was any question as to whether or not there were politics involved, and there's always politics involved in this sort of decision-making. But if there was ever any question about it, I mean, I feel like Trump sort of put those questions to bed when he just started tweeting rampantly about the connection about how we can't, we have to abandon impeachment now

that we have these international, you know, we have this issue with Iran going on. And that combined with just the general, I mean, just the state of affairs, I mean, after we make that move, I'm not quite sure how we walk it back, right? And I don't know what Tucker Carlson can say, even if he convinces Trump. I mean, how do we, how do you, how does, I find it hard to imagine that whatever it would take to walk this back is something that Trump would be willing or capable of doing. Yeah, I guess there's probably some middle ground between high stakes confrontation with Iran and full on war with Iran. so maybe if you're Carlson, you're trying to drag Trump a little bit toward the former. I guess the other thing we got to consider here is what does Tucker Carlson want to do instead of going to war with Iran? Matt Goertz had a good piece in media matters, which I'll quote from, Carlson has actually urged his audience to instead focus their attention on the invasion, quote unquote, across the southern border and undocumented immigrants living in this country. He had another segment, I believe, on Monday, where he is the whole thing called American Dysopia. And he's talking about San Francisco where he says, quote, civilization is coming apart.

The sidewalks are littered with junkies and feces and dirty needles. So what Carlson is saying is, I don't want us over there because I'm now going to demagogue and vamp about how America has gotten so awful because of all these, you know, things I'm going to. demonize immigrants, the homeless, things like that. You know, Democrats who run cities like San Francisco. Sex-crazed pandas. Yeah, exactly, right? And so is the zoom out, I mean, is the argument that he's, that if we concentrate on actual real world issues, then he will not be able to go back to his repertoire of material. I mean, like, it will, it will, it will throw into relief how ridiculous everything else he talks about is. Are we spending too much time on this? I mean, are we, are we parsing something that really doesn't matter at the end of the day?

I mean, I think the issue really matters. It's, it's, this is, you know, Tucker Carlson makes it really hard. I mean, it's really difficult to talk to Carlson to make a, you know, enemy of my enemy sort of line of argument. Even if, you know, if you agree with him, even if you agree with them, this rash, that rationale is just so inane. It, you know, it's hard to even give it too much credence. Yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe we are. But it is, but I think it is going to be interesting to watch how the sort of,

anti-war, anti- international police right responds to the situation that we're in. Because you know, we're seeing a lot of sort of reactive you know, support of the president. And I think, I don't think we'd expect

anything different. But it's, I mean, politically, I'm sure there's somebody in Trump's year telling him this sort of thing could be a real like a political winner. I'm not sure that I mean, it feels like the last several elections have shown us the exact opposite, right? I mean, and I'm not sure.

I don't know how many senators as much they want to support the president are going to be eager to have this as the main discussion in any sort of re-election battle. I guess we'll see. It'll be interesting to see how that, how the Tucker Carlson wing sort of, you know, takes shape. a couple more media notes on Iran. One was Trump's own rhetoric,

which has been filtered mostly through Twitter. There was a tweet on Saturday where he said that if Iran strikes any Americans or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites representing the 52 hostages taken by Iran many years ago, vowed to take aim at what he called the Iranian culture sites important to the Iranian culture. then on Sunday this immortal tweet these media posts and media posts was capitalized

will serve as notification in the United States Congress that should Iran strike any person or target the United States will quickly and fully strike back and perhaps in a disproportionate manner such legal notice is not required but is given nevertheless

exclamation point so that is the president carefully weighing his words as we face these media post tweet Sorry, these media posts tweet that you just read, I mean, I thought it was, if nothing else interesting because it did seem to be sort of ghost written, but still sort of filtered through Trump speak. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting marriage, right? Like, this is the formal thing we need to do. But we don't want to make, we want to keep this in Trump's own voice. Yeah. There's a lot of strenuous ghostwriting going on there. I mean, if you look at his Twitter feed now, there are something, I mean, honestly, I think over 10. retweets of Lindsay Graham, who unsurprisingly is in support of this, there's a whole lot of retweeting of, you know, of, you know, political talking heads,

of op-ed writing, of just general support of the act, the assassination. Now, you know, I guess it, we should differentiate between, you know, between you know, that assassination and what it means sort of if it means anything in terms of a march towards war. But, you know, the whole conversation just seems, it just seems like everybody's arguing in different directions. I mean, you can certainly assert the president's authority to, you know, make this decision. It doesn't mean it was a good decision, you know, and I, and it just, I guess it's just, again, disappointing that we're, you know, people are deliberately, you know, politicizing this and just by missing the forest for the trees in a lot of this conversation.

You know, and we're going to talk on and on about it, but there's also the very significant issue of them claiming it was an issue of urgent national security when there's no proof of it. And that's an easy talking point, whether or not there is actual proof of it, you know. But in reality, it's only after, it was only after the assassination. assassination that America that were urging Americans to leave Iraq because for their own safety, right? I mean, like we're like it's it really feels like the Trump administration has created the, um, the, the matter of national security that they weren't, they were not only trying to avoid. I don't know. I mean, that I don't even know how that relates directly to what to,

to Trump's timeline, but he's, I mean, Trump's Twitter timeline, but, um, he's he is more active in defending himself on this front on Twitter, then he's been just about anything else. And the chorus of voices that he's retweeting, maybe because it's the first time that he has just this chorus of voices that are like loudly backing him up. But it does seem he's, you know, I don't know if it's protesting too much or just, you know,

leading the Amen circle or whatever, but there's, he's, he's very active right now. Let's also spend one second talking about how this is filtered into the Democratic primary campaign. Reid Epstein had a good piece in New York Times about how Pete Buttigieg is leaning in to his military experience. As a military intelligence officer on the ground in Afghanistan, he told an audience Friday at a community center in this snowy ski resort town, I was trained to ask these questions before a decision is made. So he's waving his hands saying, hey, hey, hey, want somebody with military experience right here? that's I'm that guy.

Seth Moulton, who's a congressman from Massachusetts, swiped back a little bit. He said there's only one candidate who has had to make life or death decisions involving American lives, and that's Vice President Biden. There's no combat veterans left in the race. I have tremendous respect for Pete's service as an analyst, but analysts don't make decisions. Moulton served in the Marine Corps.

So that's where that comes from. I also found this fascinating from Epstein's piece. if elected, Mr. Buttigieg would be the first Democratic president since Jimmy Carter to have served in the military. So I don't know how you see this playing. You know, I think all Democrats sort of got in front of a mic and gave versions of the same statement, which was, this was not a good guy, but should we have done this? and that's mostly where they left it. And now Buttigieg is sort of coming in and saying, well, if you want somebody who can think about these issues,

I have experience that none of my opponents have. And that's going to be the way he tries to kind of pounce on it. What do you think? Yeah, and I don't think dismissing is, sir, I mean, I understand like the political calculus behind the analysts don't make decisions sort of line of argument. but like I think that in so much as Biden has made you know life or death decisions involving American lives and and and so I mean and Buddha judge serve I mean the budget service is a real

thing I think that what we look for is I mean I think what a lot of Democratic voters are looking look for is the is what candidate will I mean I think with the the appeal of Buttigieg and the appeal of Joe Biden regardless of his experience is that they claim to be able to view our men and women in uniform as human beings and not as part of a machine, you know, not as part, not as, not as like, you know, just the sort of cogs in a in a political or, you know, international relations, you know, machinery. And I, and, and I think that, you know, I guess they have to argue over who is, who has the, the better ability to see. that humanity.

But it's not, I don't, I don't think that, like, Joe Biden's actual experience in making these decisions is necessarily what's going to, like, bring people to the ballot box. I can't imagine that it's really going to be that big an issue. I think if anything, maybe it kind of rebounds to Biden in a way, just because it gets you to the kind of steady hand argument that he's been making. very explicitly throughout the campaign. Like, oh, something's happening, and we'd rather have Biden in charge of this

rather than somebody who hasn't done it. But even that's, like, I think a vague sense. I just don't, I honestly think Democratic voters, you look at those lists, you know, they care about health care, they care about other things, and I just don't know how big a priority this will be. And maybe all Democratic voters sort of think,

we're going to elect a Democrat, and they're not going to do it, right? They're going to try to reboot the Iran nuclear agreement or something, you know, they're not, they're not going to be in this confrontation. I think in so much as it helps anybody. I mean, and, you know, the little, you know, TV I've watched over the past couple of days sort of bears this out. It's, I mean, it's, it's, it may very well help Bernie Sanders, at least in the prime, amongst primary voters, right? I mean, because when this sort of thing happens, I think for a lot of voters, it's hard not to look at even eight years of the Obama

administration. And certainly Biden's, you know, career up to that point and say, like, I don't think he, He might not have okayed that, you know, this specific action. But like, you know, he did vote. I mean, he did cast votes to send us to, to send our country into war. And I'm not sure that his foreign policy overall would be, I mean, I'm not sure it'd be closer to Trump than Bernie Sanders, but it may be, you know. And I think that's a, I mean, that's a real consideration, especially for, like I said, the really motivated primary voting block. It's time now, David, for the overword Twitter. joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious

that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. David, who cares about Julian Castro? Because the real campaign shakeup story last week was candidate Marion Williamson firing her entire national staff and hinting she would replace it with quote, volunteers. A lot of good stuff came out of that, but this one

I thought got it just right. It was an upward Twitter joke to write. The downsized Williamson campaign is also known as Crystal Light. Crystal Light. In Iran news, David, we had a funny situation last week where you look at the trending topics list on Twitter and you see the actual trending topic next to the one that's a paid ad. Well, after the Iran strike, there were back-to-back trending topics and said, WW3, like World War

3, and then the hashtag, this is my WW, which means this is my Weight Watchers. Twitter's algorithm, getting confused by WW3 and WW Weight Watchers. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write for some people, Weight Watchers is their World War III, thanks to James.

And finally, David, is it possible to self-overwork a Twitter joke? Oh, I don't know. Let's find out. I think maybe so because there's a political commentator named Dave Rubin, who's had this bit about the Middle East. He's been workshopping on Twitter since 2013. Here he is. This is September 2013.

Obama at the UN, quote, I ran to get here, but I'm not Russian to be put between Iraq and a hard place. Let's see all the puns. He did it again in, March of 2015. John Kerry, quote, Iran to get here, but

Israeli a mess. We're between Iraq in a hard place. Again in February 2016. And now Dave Rubin finally got to make the joke he's been waiting for. So he tweets this on January 3rd.

I ran to get here, but we're between Iraq and a hard place. Israeli a mess. So let's talk Turkey, not just Greece the conversation. Syria, folks, this Kuwait, but don't Crimea River

in a month from now. I don't even know what to say. That list of puns was so good that it was seven years in the making. You know, sometimes you make a joke on Twitter and then immediately you're hit with like

that sinking feeling that you made the same joke last year, you know, the Super Bowl last year, you made the same Super Bowl commercial. Do we think this guy's not quite aware? And you don't know and you don't want to look. Yeah. I was like, I know, I got this Iraq in a hard place joke, which by the way, must be one of the great overused pun headlines of all time. I guarantee there's a 1991 version of Iraq and a hard place. Anyway, thanks to Bonnie Rachel. If you had mid-east punnage, you love so much you used it for seven years. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump.

I want to talk to you about the death of David Stern, who was NBA commissioner from 1984 to 2014. I read most of the obituaries. And you know what they reminded me of? They reminded me of the obituaries for John McCain. And let me tell you why. David Stern was a great NBA commissioner. No doubt about that. but he was also great at making the people who cover the NBA feel important, right?

He was, like McCain, super available. Like McCain, he was absolutely ready to spar with reporters and argue for them, which makes reporters actually feel better than if he'd been an easy interview because they like to feel like they're challenging someone, right? They're doing their job and damn it, you know, the bastard yelled at me, but he still returned my calls the next time. Mm-hmm. I feel these were the obituaries in a way that David Stern spent his career planning for.

And I don't know if I've ever seen a public figure, maybe other than McCain, whose obits were more geared around the reporters give and take with that public figure, like written through the lens of, here's how I covered David Stern and here's that thing he said to me one time. What were your impressions sifting through all of those obits? I think that was my immediate takeaway too, that everybody, you know, with a lot of, I mean, when a lot of public figures pass on, there's often a lot of sameness in the lead, right? I mean, people kind of get in and get out in the same. I mean, if it's, you know, even if someone ventures a take in their, in their, or, you know, a real, any kind of particular point of view in their obituaries, you know, it's usually tends in the same direction or at least. with the people who were, you know, going to play arch. I mean, maybe the exact opposite direction. But again, a lot of sameness.

There was a lot of sameness maybe in the overall, you know, stern as a force of nature. And I think that was Woj, who specifically had that in the headline, kind of, you know, overall, you know, thesis. But you're right. Every piece started differently. Every piece was built around. a specific interaction, a specific, you know, a very personal interactioner point of view. And, and, you know, maybe you're right. I mean, that's the, that, that, that in some ways is the most, um, the clearest evidence of Stern's lasting legacy. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's the easiest

way to win over journalists, right, is to be available to journals. And as I said, as I said, second to go, make them feel important. Make them feel like you're engaging with what they're saying, even if you're yelling at them, that you're paying attention and you're almost, you're going over what they're saying with a fine-tooth comb. A couple of examples. Ethan Strauss in the piece he wrote for the athletic said that one time he used the word solipsistic when interviewing Stern and quote, Stern expressed doubt that I was using the word correctly.

Basketball writer Ken Burger says that Stern always called him a project, like in the prospect sense of the word, as in Burger, you've always been a project. Mike Wise was interviewing him recently and said, told Stern, be honest. You could be an asshole, right? David in a voice laced with sarcasm, pointed to himself and said, moi?

Another time, Mike Wise calls David Stern because he's written a piece in the New York Times that he knows Stern was upset by. He gets Stern on the line. He says, I guess I must have written something that pissed you off again. David, voice rising, said,

hey, Mike, fuck you. And then the line goes dead. Henry Abbott over a true hoop who I think wrote one of the handful of obits that really took Stern's complexities, the bad parts about him and actually explored them. He talked about asking Stern a tough question in a press conference, which Stern hated, kind of yells at him semi-comically. And then Stern invites Abbott to walk with him back to his office where he gives him all this inside dope on the labor negotiations that are going on. Wow. Yeah. And, you know, part of that accessibility is born out of the league that Stern was a commissioner of.

The NBA needed all the attention it could get during that period. So, you know, you would expect that guy to be more available. Like, oh, you want to write about basketball? Even something negative? Here I am. Can I answer some questions for you? But, you know, nobody's going to write about experiences like that about Roger Goodell. ever or bud sealing they'll have some but they won't have that level of intimacy

that he was able to cultivate well in a lot of ways it's emblematic of the league right i mean it's where it's a personality based league and and so much of what we write is based on so much what we write and read is based on you know relationships with players and agents and and moreover and sort of portraying them as human beings, you know, whether, you know, setting aside how honest and forthright those depictions are, you know, and, you know, you've written a lot yourself about that sort of the reporter player relationship and how it's sort of unique in the basketball arena. But yeah, I mean, for Stern to sort of cultivate that personality and those relationships.

I think you said it. I mean, speaks a lot to where the league, where he started with the league, right? And where the status of the league when he took over. But that he kept,

you know, that he sort of kept that reputation up, that he kept that personality up till the end, I think says a lot about him. Yeah. And I think in a way it takes the edge

off the bullied him. Because as a commissioner, he really could be a bully. And he could often be a bully against the players. I love this this headline ran in my Sunday New York Times on the Mark Stein essay about Stern

it said Compassionate Dictator will be sorely missed Now think about that What other section of the Times Could the headline Compassionate Dictator Will be sorely missed ever possibly run Yeah not in the business section Not in

You know actual actual political world news dictator section it can only run with a sports commission and you know I heard I heard Bill mention Pete Roselle I mean to me that's the forget for a second how great a commissioner he was or not that's the that's the journalistic

model of David Stern Pete Roselle you'd read would sit back grab a whiskey and you know kick around ideas with journalists right The whole idea was you have access to this world historical figure, at least within the realm of sports. That's David Stern to me as a media figure. You have the chance to kick around stuff with this guy and feel like he's actually listening to you.

Yeah. Some of them were adversarial positions that he took, and there were many, justifiably criticized at the time. And certainly, you know, after his, you know, after he stepped down, and since he's passed on. And maybe it was his personality. And maybe it was the sort of relationships that allow us to have a sort of more circumspect or more overall positive view of the man.

I mean, a lot of, some of the decisions he made and some of the, his leadership tended towards a sort of like, you know, the sort of necessary wartime president vibe, right? I mean, he was like, he was, he was a, he was on a mission a lot of the time to sort of build the league and only he would know what was, you know what the right direction was. But his tenure was much broader than that. And the way he expanded the league and turned it into a, you know, really a national sport in a lot of ways is irrefutable.

Also in the, you know, on the relationship with writers and the sort of open personality, you know, line, it's interesting to look at his successor, Adam Silver. And I was watching the two popes this weekend and ran and was just imagining Stern and Adam Silver having these conversations. Right, the Stern was just sort of like, all right, all right, I've done all that I can do. It's time for a different look. But in a lot of, you know, Adam Silver was certainly widely praised as a kind of antidote to Stern. Yes. But in a lot of ways, it's very, very similar. And the longer that he's in office is, you know, is this, you know, certainly politically, he's a different person. But the longer that he's that he's that he's in that, you know, that seat, you know, there's, there's, I feel like there's more. You know, there's, there's, there's, I feel like there's more. more and more similarities. But certainly in the accessibility or at least the pretense of it, he learned a lot of that from David Stern. I feel in the profiles of Adam Silver that were running up to a couple of years ago,

that David Stern had been reduced to like this couple of paragraphs where we would talk about the dress code and the other less savory things that he did. And Silver was kind of presented as a more perfected David Stern. And then Stern dies. and dies sort of unexpectedly and early, I think. And, you know, I think that in a way, a lot of that stuff got pushed to the side a little bit or got mentioned, you know, kind of quickly,

but not really investigated by people writing about it. Like, what did that mean? You know, that's a lot of sentences like, well, he was brilliant and he was a bullet. Well, what does that mean? What was brilliant and what was bully? You know, what was the bad stuff? So, yeah, I think that is.

Another point that Simmons made, I thought on his pod that that was really good was that David Stern just knew everything about the modern history of the NBA. And basketball is kind of interesting because the fact that it grew and a little later than the NFL and certainly than baseball meant that you could have access to almost all of modern basketball history through a guy like Stern that you couldn't with the NFL, right? we're not going to get Vince Lombardi on the phone. We're not going to get Johnny Unitas on the phone. But Stern could take you back and pretty much get you from, you know, the 60s all the way to the present. And he was this unbelievable historical resource for people and was very interested in talking about the league's history. And again, if you're talking about, you know, what can you do to help journalists or make journalists feel good about, you being able to pop on the phone and say, sure, I'll talk to you about this thing that happened

in 1983 or this thing that happened in 2001. That's huge too. Yeah, totally agree. All right. Let's talk NFL playoffs. David, you know, I hate the term storylines. Here are the story lines for week one of the playoffs. You know, you can just write the story. You don't have to tell us what storyline is. Just write the story. But I have to admit that the action on Saturday and Sunday was lousy with storylines. First up, I want you to listen closely to Jim Nance because this call

may represent the final moments of the New England Patriots dynasty. To end it, the two of them are trying it is. Yes, I mean, we'll never see this run again, Jim. Rady's pass. It's intercepted and returned for a touchdown by Logan Ryan, the

former Patriots. Patriots lost that game to the Tennessee Titans 20 to 13. Tom Brady is a free agent, not guaranteed to come back to the Patriots. Congrats to Boston Sports Radio on your next three months of content. My first thought went here. This may not only be the end of the Patriots dynasty, it may be the end of one of the great career-making

or career-improving beats in the history of sports writing. Here are some names of people who careers benefited from them covering the Patriots. Michael Smith, formerly of ESPN, Ian Rappaport, Albert Breer, Michael Holly, Tom Curran, Field Yates currently of ESPN. I could keep going. That beat or that city

was an absolute gold mine for the people covering it. And it's always so funny to me about sports writers because it's very much the hand of fate. Like if the Jaguars, gone to nine Super Bowls over the last 20 years, that beat would have been great. And those people would have become big figures and been promoted. But it was a Patriot. And so all of, that was just this great engine and it's selected. And again, let's say nothing about those people, because a lot of

talented people. It selected those people for extra attention. It selected them. It made them more eligible to go get bigger gigs off that beat. And if that is coming to an end, like I said, we saw this will be the end of one of the great sports writer advancement beats in the whole history of the game. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I mean, we saw a smaller version of a very similar thing in the NBA with just every outlet relocating or half their staff to the Bay Area for the, you know, to follow the Warriors during the past several seasons. And this is, one, you know, I guess I'd be interested to see

what a lot of those people are up to this season. I mean, what they're going to be doing during the playoffs too. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's a, it is a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, a, it's a, their name off of the Warriors, but, you know, ESPN and other outlets, the athletic were, like, moving writers to the Bay Area, right? I mean, they were, they were putting their best writers on that beat, just like, you know, we've seen that with other teams, other great teams, too, but a lot of those, a lot of those Patriot writers, like you said, like made their name covering the Patriots, and they got famous covering the Patriots, and, you know, this probably isn't

the end of the Patriots dynasty, but, um, probably not. It did feel, it did, it did feel like a, like a moment for more circumspection than we've had any of their previous losses, right? I mean, this was the, this could be the end of an incredible run for one of the greatest football franchises ever. And at a time of incredible sports media instability, I'm sure there's a little bit more, I'm sure that the, the kind of sadness is more profound amongst the Patriots beat right beat writing crew, you know? I mean, it's a, it was an incredible element of stability in a very unstable sort of sports writing world right now. To that point, though, the rise and dynasty of the

Patriots was a great story. You know what else is a great story to cover? The fall of the Patriots dynasty. Yeah. Tom Brady going and signing with Tampa Bay. Bill Belichick finally getting fed up and going off to coach somewhere else. you know, the Patriots looking for their next quarterback. That's also a great story. Think of how many stories there were out of the fall of the Cowboys dynasty in the 90s. Oh, yeah. I'm not sure the Patriots will ever match the Cowboys in just in terms of pure, you know, insanity.

But that was itself a great story. Maybe it's certainly not insanity, but in terms of, you know, the NFL being much more of a 12-month sport than it was at that point. I mean, the biggest stories, I mean, the highest traffic stories that are going to come out of the Patriots this season and next are going to be what happens between now and the start of next season. And, you know, whether it's just the complete dissolution of the Patriots as we know it, or, you know, even if it's just a new contract for Tom Brady, I mean, this is the story now that everybody is eager to tell. and I guess all these writers just get like, you know, an extra month jump on this reporting. Over in the NFC during the Vikings Saints playoff game, the story was the officiating, I guess thereof, on this third and goal play in overtime. You're on Rudolph up here at the top. Cousins throws. Pass is caught for the win.

That was Vikings tied in Kyle Rudolph with the game winning touchdown catch. what you don't see there is him pushing off the defensive back and apparently committing offensive pass interference every time I see one of these officiating controversies in the NFL it's funny because I think we start to have this conversation about gosh the officials are so bad now something I don't necessarily believe and you know this something has to be done because it's shaking our faith in the game. I can never quite get myself to that point because it seems like every time we have a crisis like this, it just becomes content immediately. Like the officials suck. A bill's going to talk about it Sunday night. Stephen A is going to talk about it Monday morning.

And there's this, there's, there's, there is a point where something can, could happen in the NFL that some non-negligible segment of customers could be like, you know what? I really don't like that. that's going to, you know, decrease my interest in some level in the NFL. But to me, the much more likely scenario is it just becomes content that actually builds our interest in the NFL. Yeah. That we wanted something to talk about. I mean, this is just my point of view, but it's weird.

I found it odd. I mean, I found my own reaction odd that in this situation, when there actually is presumably a correct and incorrect point of view on this question, right, as to whether or not that was past interference, the argument seemed much more hollow than when the arguments when the subject is much more abstract, right? Is Dak Prescott worth $25 million a year, $30 million a year, whatever? Like, that's an argument that I'm interested in watching Stephen A. Smith yell about, right? I mean, but this just just seemed like, I mean, maybe it was just the frustration that comes

with NFL officiating, right? That, like, there should be an answer, and it comes down to this weird sort of, you know, fourth quarter call, is that a call that you actually make sort of, you know, splitting of hairs situation? But, and also it's like it's either a yes or a no. Like, I don't need a paragraph. I mean, it's either this, tell me your, what's your point of view? Is that pass interference? Okay. Well, now I know. But like, we can we move on. Yeah, good call, bad call. But it's, it's, it's never, NFL officiating conversations are just, they're just never fun. And, and, And the more that the NFL tries to like, you know, update the rules, tweak the rules to make these things more definitive, the more it just becomes like it feels like we're being forced to have these conversations. You know, if it's like, we're like suddenly changing the terms of the conversation, maybe with the hopes of just like obscuring, obscuring what the good call is.

But I don't know, it just seems, it's just, it just feels frustrating. Maybe that, maybe that's good for their ratings. Maybe that's a good argument to some people. I just feel like just sort of just frustrating. by the whole thing. We just, I think we've subtly, or maybe not so suddenly changed what a game cast is for. Because isn't like, wouldn't you say like one of the top two things your telecast of an NFL game can do is show you the angles on a disputed call?

I mean, that, that has gone from like eighth on the list of things we should do to like third on the list of things we should do during a game. Yeah. That just feel, again, it's content. It feels like part of the thing. We're going to, we're going to have a controversial call. in the end zone. Usually it's going to involve whether a pass is complete or pass interference or something like that. We're going to watch it 19 times. Troy or Tony or Chris is going to give us

their opinion. This ref in the booth who we put in the booth basically for situations like this is going to give us our opinion, their opinion. And that's going to be a thing. That's part of the rights of watching a game now is bitching about. It's like it was. It was, always bitching about the officiating. I think it was Joe Tessitore once told me that people do three things during game. They complain about the announcers. They complain about the offensive coordinator and they complain about the officials. But now that has been institutionalized. Like this is the, okay, let's go to Mike Pereira and this is the part of the game where we're going to bitch about the officiating. We've walled this off. That's the thing. And again, it just

speaks to what I'm talking about in terms of how a crisis becomes content. Speaking of cheap content. How about the Dallas Cowboys coaching search? Speaking of beats that have made people rich. Oh my gosh. First of all, I was reading Richard Deich's Monday MediaCom in The Athletic and he noted that top five most watched games of the year in the NFL, the Cowboys were three of them. Cowboys were numbers one, two, and five on the list. Cowboys bills on Thanksgiving Day got 32.6 million viewers.

which is almost 3 million more viewers than any other NFL game. So then the Cowboys have a coaching search. And I didn't really watch anything. I was reading the local reporters there in Dallas. But every time I would sort of walk by a TV, I feel Stephen A was talking about the Cowboys coaching search. Like if that's our reliable indicator for what is the number one story in America right now. And by the way, not just in sports.

Cowboys coaching search number one, Iran, standoff number two. But that is just like an absolute goldmine for everybody involved in the NFL to get in. Kevin Clark had this side hustle where he was just making jokes about Jason Garrett for a week.

That was kind of a full-time job. Funny jokes about the Cowboys not firing their old coach. I don't guess I have much of a point here, but I'm amazed. The Cowboys have went to the playoffs three times, in Jason Garrett's nine years as head coach, three times. They didn't win anything. And they are still, thanks to a brand created back in the 70s,

and thanks to Jerry Jones's absolute overweening interest in remaining relevant, whatever the hell that means at all times, they continue to be this gigantic story. Yeah, I mean, listen, their platform on television, I'm sure, I mean, is unimpeachable, right? I mean, they're given all, they're given these spots. I mean, they've earned them because of the ratings they get, but they're, but they're presented as a, you know,

one of the most central teams in the league. And, you know, give Jerry Jones credit. I mean, he's built a respectable roster here. If they were, if this were the, you know, Quincy Carter Cowboys, maybe we'd be giving it a little bit less attention right now. Maybe. Maybe.

I mean, but it would still be getting, a lot of attention because it's the it's the melodrama right it's it's like reading into what's going on behind the scenes and and i'm sure it wasn't deliberate but the way this thing played out was just hilarious i mean like there were days and days of of non-action right i mean they they didn't fire jason garrett even after the war leaked out they probably would after his last game he was out in the field throwing balls and people were were were you know tweeting you know tweeting photos of it and telling the story as if this were like, you know,

the great war general out there just like taking a last look at the battlefield before he wheels off into obsolescence or whatever. But the, and then the fact that it never, that it took so many days to resolve, um, the only updates we got were these like carefully worded Ed Worder tweets

that were clearly fed by some source. Um, it was just, it was just begging for attention for almost accidentally. Not that it needed any extra help. And don't forget they were interviewing people for Jason Garrett's job before they had fired Jason Garrett. I don't even think they fired him. They just said they were going to let us contract.

I mean, Jason Garrett, the Giants today, I think, had to ask permission to interview Jason Garrett for their offense coordinator job. Before they had confirmed he was not coming back. Yeah. But they were interviewing people for his job. And you had this whole, again, so cowboys, right, that Mike McCarthy, the new coach was staying over at Jerry Jones's house. also just the tweet of maybe the millennium was Ian Rappaport

who I mentioned a minute ago as a product of the the Patriots Boston machine he tweeted the Cowboys have officially fired coach Jason Garrett and Garrett has allowed them to do so source confirms right Jason Garrett has allowed himself to be fired as the coach of Dallas Cowboys

I mean that's the most Cowboys thing ever it is and it also speaks to like some arcane aspect of the contract or brilliantly negotiated aspect of the contract that for whatever reason we're not really privy to yet? I mean, there's obviously something. I can only be fired with permission? Yeah, I don't, I mean, I just don't understand. But it was, I mean, there's, there's an aspect of this that we don't know. And if the answer is solely, you know, Jerry Jones's personal affection for Jason Garrett, because there was also the conversation finding another

rule for him in the front office, which either could be a symptom of great personal affection or, or, you know, trying to, or Jerry Jones trying to evade some sort of contractual stipulation that would have, you know, that kept him from firing him right after the last game. I don't know. I mean, the intrigue is, is incredible for this. And it's, it's, it just, I mean, the institution that the Cowboys have built is certainly a multimedia one. I mean, we're all very interested in this team no matter what happens. But for whatever reason, this just seemed like just a extreme moment, especially for a coach that no one would have been shocked if he had been fired any of the past several seasons,

right? I mean, and now his contract is basically up. So, I mean, it's, I don't know, the whole thing was just sort of hilarious. Also, this is neither here nor there. But get out your Google image search and look at Mike McCarthy and then look at Stephen Jones. They look a whole lot of like. I'm not saying that's why Jerry Jones made this decision. Mike McCarthy looks like Stephen Jones, you know, after like several, several too many trips to the buffet. Those guys look very, very similar. So when you see him on the sideline, just imagine what

Jerry Jones is thinking in his head. You've just created a whole new subgenre of Cowboys content. Is Jerry Jones hiring his own son after he already hired his own son? Yeah, exactly. Unbelievable. Can I ask you a totally just ridiculous Cowboys question? Ryan? Yeah. Do you think if Jerry Jones like put him made himself head, I know we've been talking about this. People have made this joke a million times over the years. If Jerry Jones made himself head coach of the Dallas Cowboys,

would he be better than Freddie Kitchens? That's a great question. Like, like, because that's basically the Jerry Jones cutoff point, right? Right. It's not Bill Belichick. It's Freddie Kitchens. There's no way he'd be. good, but like, would he be, would he be better than like the worst NFL head coach?

So I think Jerry, Jerry would cast himself as what he calls the walk around coach, right, if he were the head coach, where essentially you walk around and pat players on the butt and let your coordinators do the work. So I think, like,

there's a pretty good chance Jerry would hire a better offensive coordinator than Freddie Kitchens. And the problem would, to me, would be Jerry, like, trying to, like, manage timeouts and stuff like that. Like,

that would scare the hell out of me. Yeah. I always wanted Jerry to really coach the team. I just thought that was the logical place this was going to wind up. Speaking of content. The moment for him was the Barry Switzer moment, right? Because you had a, like, you had a colossus of a team. And if you were going to just, I mean, it's...

Anybody can win a Super Bowl, quote unquote, with this team. It was basically like what we thought Greg Popovich was doing when he made himself coach of the Spurs. Although Greg Popovich turned out to be just one of the greatest coaches all time. But like, to just kind of come out of the office and be just like, No, no, I can take it from here, guys. Don't worry. That would have been amazing. No, no.

You have your new coach right here. All right, time for David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline. Here, David gives us a weary side. Last week's headline from a medical journal on surfing injuries was when the wave breaks you. As usual, our listeners are funnier than we are. Kelsey says it should have been awabunga, dude. Zach Brooks and your dad have had versions of

MRI-M-R-R-R-I-Ding the wave Morgan Duke says it should have been hang tendon hang tendon This week's headline comes from Brian Cirquea It's from the economist David, have you followed the story of Carlos Gowne Oh yeah This is the former head of Nissan Renault

Who was awaiting prosecution in Japan and then fled to Lebanon. Everyone wondering how the hell did he get out of Japan, this high-profile guy about to go on trial, Gown claimed he was fleeing injustice. But think of Carlos Gown, David, getting the hell out of Dodge. What was the economist's strained pun headline? Oh, man.

Carlos Gone, Nissan. on, my God, there's so much, there's so much stuff here. Like, I would admit, God. Japan. I mean, I'm sticking on, like, Nissan models.

Like, is there, like, is there, like, is there, you're actually going to inside here. Just go with the guy's name. How do you say his last name? Gone. It's spelled G-H-O-S-N. G-G-O-S-N.

Is it like, G-O-N? with the wind. Goan, but not forgotten? What are we doing? We would have accepted both of those. The economist headline was actually gone, going, gone.

Wouldn't going, going, going, be better? Yes, no, I think that's right. Going, going, goon.

But, goon, going, gone. Thanks to Brian Cirque for sending that in. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida,

production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Friday. With more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. You think when he was in his prime, anyone used the headline, the Ultima Warrior? Here I am.

Can I answer some questions for you? Tell me what's your point of view? I was trained to fully strike back and perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless, exclamation point. It's either a yes or a no.

Like, I don't need a paragraph. I mean, it's either... You could be an asshole, right? Wow. David in a voice laced with sarcasm. He doesn't point to himself and said, I think that's right. Yeah. Damn it.

You know, the bastard yelled at me, but he still returned my calls the next time. It doesn't mean it was a good decision. So what, David, should we make of junkies and feces and dirty needles? Sex-crazed pandas. They won't have that level of intimacy. Mm-hmm. Why not? Um.

Yeah, exactly, right? And speaking to cheap content, what was the best? bad stuff. I'm now going to demagogue. I don't even know what to say. It's kind of an interesting marriage, right? Like, this is the formal thing we need to do. But too dismissive.

Well, okay, we'll be. Are we spending too much time on this? I mean, are we, are we parsing something that really doesn't matter at the end of the day? Yeah.