The Press Box - Listener Mail on Hatchet Jobs, Trump’s Sports Commentary, and the NFL Network Adding Rachel Bonnetta and Gambling

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

Bryan and David answer your Listener Mail and talk through the piece “The Dying Art of the Hatchet Job” (0:35), touch on former president Trump providing an alternate audio feed for the Holyfield-Belfort fight (40:12), and discuss the news that Rachel Bonnetta will join the NFL Network and focus on legalized sports betting content (43:29). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringers Charles Holmes and co-host Grace Spellman present the most notorious new podcast in the industry, the Ringer Music Show. Every Tuesday, they'll bring you the latest news, the hottest takes, and the deepest reporting about the wild world of music and the chaotic industry that creates it. Check out the Ringer Music Show exclusively on Spotify. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, and David Shoemaker here, along with producer Erica Zervantes, is the press box. It's Friday. That means we answer listener mail. And David, I wanted to put. a piece in front of you right from the top here because it's something you and I have thought about in various ways over the years. The story is called the dying art of the hatchet job. Yeah.

By Dorian Linsky. Great, great title. Mm-hmm. And we will excuse Dorian Linsky for using the Ted Lassow discourse as his peg. Because that is banned from the press box forever. There's no discoursing about Ted Lazo here. But he uses that as a way into a really interesting topic.

Let me read you a little bit and we'll get into this here. Dorian Linsky writes, the new statesman writer Sarah Manevis stealed herself for a backlash. Quote, it's always fun to post an article that you know beforehand will get very badly ratioed, she tweeted, after linking to a piece in which she called Apple TVs, feel-good soccer sitcom Ted Lasso, the most overrated show on TV.

And so it came to pass. Three weeks later, she tweeted, despite spending most of my career writing about online radicalization and disinformation, I've never received more abuse than when I criticized Ted Lasso. Now, Manavis, David, is not the only person who was hit for writing a hatchet job. In May, the critic and friend of the press box, Scott Tobias used the 20th anniversary of the movie Shrek to write a piece calling Shrek terrible. Here is Linsky writing again.

I found the reaction to Tobias's piece, extraordinary. Tobias was called at best a cynical, click-hungry contrarian, at worst, a twisted, misanthropic snobb. Shrek fans disjoyless Chud Guardian critic who called the film funny, unfunny and overrated, reported the rap. Linsky writes, there used to be an understanding among readers that any worthwhile critic,

whether it be William Hazlett, Kenneth Tynan or Pauline Kale, would need to hate as well as to love. Now critics are often up against readers who resist the very notion of criticism. What do we think about that endangered species known as the Hatchet Job? Oh, man.

Well, I mean, the Hatchet Job has had a number of peaks over the past century or so. But, you know, we've talked on this show before about its most recent, I guess, Apex sort of personified in one Dale Peck who was at some, if not from the beginning of his critical career at some point, just very deliberately writing hatchet jobs for their own sake, either seeking out subject matter for which, which was, you know,

hatchet ready, or maybe just being a slightly, more of a performative hatcheteer on whatever subject he was assigned. Yes. You know, there's pushback against that at a time. And it,

and I think that, you know, sober individuals can probably find a common ground on to what degree that was, that was, you know, necessary versus unnecessary in the world of criticism.

And also, you know, to what degree it's okay just to like publish performative criticism in that way. I don't think that, I probably take a pretty extreme view. I think that what he was doing at the time

was, in some ways, a necessary corrective because, you know, I think that his perception, his argument was or would have been that reviews were too, nice, you know, they were, that they were getting too cushy compared to where they had been in

whatever glory day he would have pointed back to. And I don't disagree with that in a vacuum. What we're dealing with now is a more, is probably a more extreme version of what Peck would have perceived. But in some ways, it seems like the stakes are much lower. And maybe that's because we've been beaten down by just this as the state of, as the kind of new state of play. And it doesn't seem as problematic. But, you know, you and I have sort of been present for a lot of this evolution in real time. I mean, when, when Bill started Grantland, he pretty quickly pivoted from calling Andy Greenwald a TV critic to a TV connoisseur, right? Or whatever, I don't remember if that was exactly the term, but it was, he was there to appreciate good

television. That's what made, that's what, you know, readers wanted to read. And that's what this, you know, great writer and Andy wanted to be writing about, not just like, you know, 800 word takedowns of whatever new CBS sitcom was out, right? And Andy's interesting, right? Because he can he can connoisseur it up with the best of him, but he can also swing the club. I mean, Andy's the guy who didn't like True Detective season one.

Sure. If you listened and you listen to the watch and Andy is, you know, Andy has his taste, right? And he has things he likes and things he doesn't like. But you're right. It is an interesting moment. And to go back to Dale Peck for just one second, part of what he is, he stands in such stark relief in his era because it's the era of the believer. Am I getting my dates right here?

Which published nice reviews about books by and large. There's this kind of push. There had been a pushback against negative criticism. So he's standing out there. This, I feel the the whole critical terrain and media terrain. right now is completely different than that period. And there are several factors that Linsky cites in this story. I'll give you a few of them and tell me which one of these hits you.

One is the shrinking number of pages. And Linsky's argument is, look, if you have enough room in your book review to review 20 books, you know, you can have a mix of tough reviews and nice reviews. but if you have room to review three books, which in my LA Times when they have the book section on the weekend, I sometimes see, are you really going to use one of those to have just like an absolute hatchet job? Are you going to spotlight things you like and that your critics like to put them in front of you? So part of it is just an inventory. I think you can spin that out into a larger commentary on the, you know, critical industry, the review and industrial complex, whatever you want to say.

There's fewer pages in general. And there's a smaller and ever-shinking, probably, audience to consume such things. So have you wanted to write, you know, a giant takedown of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections when it came out? That would exist in a sea of positive reviews that presumably most of your audience would have also read, right? And since there are fewer pages of criticism in general, book reviews, whatever else, movie reviews,

and fewer people consuming it, then yeah. I mean, if you're whatever, I mean, fill in the blank, you know, periodical, you might be publishing the only review of a book that someone's reading. Wouldn't you rather dedicate that space towards a energetic positive review of something someone really wanted to write instead of like taking the pose of dissent because you think you need to correct the perception of something. There's no perception of anything to be corrected. Tell people what it is. And I, you know, you understand why someone would tend towards writing about something they're excited about instead of something they're like agitated about. Litsky has a related point to that too,

which he says in the world of music when most albums don't make money, it is understandable for critics to pull their punches. Sort of related to what you just said. Because if everybody's making money off art or a lot of people, all books and movies, and albums and things, I think then as a critic, you feel like, hey, that person made a lot of money.

So I'm going to say exactly what I want. I'm going to go after it with abandoned. But if it is, at least in music criticism, a situation where like, wow, all albums are, a lot of albums are tanking,

then you're going to be like, what am I criticizing here? Something that didn't make this person any money anyway. And I think there is, and of course, that's not a hard and fast rule. People criticize independent films,

small films, everything all the time. But I do think there's some kind of relationship there between the artists making money and the critics sort of feeling, hey, I am fully energized to go after you. That success breeds hatchet jobs. Yeah. Because it's just riper targets. Yeah, it's completely true. There's, I mean, the pulling the punches comment, I think is exactly right.

I mean, it's talking about, you know, when you look back, it's. some of the great literary hatchet jobs. They're taking on, like, authors of great esteem, you know, people with long careers who are maybe, have a stinker of a book or a stinker of an album or whatever. And also, you know, when you, you know, if you look back at the Dale Peck era, a lot of the books that would have been attacked seemed to be sort of part of, it was more, I guess the attack is partly on the publishing world, right? It's like you were putting a lot of, you were building.

building up this book or this writer to be the next Hemingway. And I want everyone to know that that is not the case, right? And in a world in which there are fewer and fewer, well, books for sure, but fewer and fewer TV shows that have some sort of universal appeal or universal attention or even near universal attention. What is the need to dissuade anyone from watching a minor show on showtime or, you know, the vice channel or like whatever you know there's no like you're not argue you're arguing you're you're you're you're boxing with ghosts you know i mean there's no there's there's there's no there's

no one is being forced to watch this thing even if the perception i mean no one's ever being forced to watch or read or whatever but if they're but you know if there's only three channels yes then it's justifiable to come out and say like this tripe that nbc is serving you is not deserving of your time you know or whatever but it's but you know when there's an endless number of channels that are getting fewer and fewer eyeballs. What's the point? Absolutely. And I think that's part of this. The more the world fractures, the less, you know, sort of mainstream, you know, kind of collective experience we have, the harder it gets to do that. I absolutely believe that. Linsky also cites the no-context Twitter world that these hatchet jobs wind up surfacing in.

It says, when a review goes viral now, Most of the people reading it, provided they actually do read beyond the headline, will have no idea who the writer is. So he or she is reduced to the status of an H.M. Bateman caricature. The man who hates Shrek, the woman who hates Ted Lassow. Thus, a negative piece is damned as clickbait by the angry people who are clicking on it while ignoring all the positive pieces that the critic has also turned in. Well, yeah. I mean, if you look at any time there's a subject like that's trending on Twitter or basically anything turning on Twitter, if you go to the, you know, if you click on the subject, what you'll immediately see are

sees and sees of people who are like, I see people are talking about how Shrek sucks. Well, here's my point of view. You know, it's not a reaction even to the piece at all. It's a reaction to the hashtag about the piece, you know? Yes. Wait, somebody said Shrek sucks? What? You know? Like, I'm in. But to go back to your point earlier about our friend Andy Greenwald, he was able to take swings that shows he didn't like, one, because he's honest and intelligent, but two, because when he was dissenting on true detective, he was doing that, I think he did it in writing, but predominantly he was doing that on his podcast, right? And especially on a podcast, your presence, your body

of work is a known quantity, right? Your personality is a known quantity. And if you have a body of work that can back it up, even in writing, in that era, he was known for the body of work, then it's easy, it's more understandable to take it in context, right? And on the, and on the podcast, you know, it, it, those sorts of things can become almost a bit, right? It's just like, oh, here we go, talking about the show you don't want to talk about again, you know, and that's, and so it becomes a little, you know, cross-firing and fun because of that. Yeah, the man who hate Shrek is actually a character you can inhabit on a podcast or the man who hates, woman who hates Ted Lasson, and that's funny. It is, it is. And then, but, but separate from that,

there's no, there's no ambiguous man or woman in on a podcast, you know, I mean, unless no, no one very, like a vanishingly small number of people would ever get access to any podcast by listening to a 15 second clip online or something like that. You know, like you, you, you, you might be your first time listening to the podcast, but you, but you subscribe to a podcast, right? You are, you become part of the, I mean, you become part of the family, you know, or the, or the podcasters become part of yours, you know, I mean, you, you understand who, you, you, you understand who, you understand the context of such criticism. And yeah, if you are Scott Tobias writing about Shrek and The Guardian,

it's a totally different world because it's just the headline. I mean, the best case scenario is that there's a link there. But on Twitter, very few, I mean, who's going to click on that? They're just going to look at the picture and read the headline, and that's all they kind of want to know about it, right? They'll read the screenshot quotes that other people are posting about it. I mean, posting from it, you know, it's definitely a very specific view. And unless, I mean, if you're not going to a specific periodical, if you're not reading somebody in the context of their work or because you follow them on Twitter, then there's no reason you would know the context of it.

I think the Tobias piece was actually really a funny one because I frankly agreed with a lot of his points. That movie does suck. And I've, and I've sort of, and it actually reminded me of seeing it for the first time. I've seen it since, but I felt I've had a lot of those feelings if I didn't put them into sentences upon saying it for the first time. But I would, but as I'm reading it, I'm thinking this and also thinking, I don't know if I would dedicate any amount of time to making this case online because I would rather do something different. Right, which is the point, right? Yeah. Everybody's going to get mad at me if I do this.

I don't even care about getting mad. I mean, listen, just as we say, just as I was saying, we have been present for a lot for some of this transatlantic. transition from criticism to connoisseurism or however you want to define it. We've also been present for, I mean, like, you know, a lot, the handful of really great, like hatchet jobs or, you know, whatever, takedowns in various, various things. Sometimes it's a fruit, you know, like whatever. But when those things, when the ringer has published things like that, a lot of times I've seen them, I've seen them birth, I mean, be given birth on, on Slack, right?

someone will just come into slack with a ridiculous, usually just in charity, will come into slack with a ridiculous hot take and then defend themselves against everybody, I mean, just in a total put on, right? Just defend themselves, defend themselves, defend themselves. And then at some point, the editor will parachute in and be like, stop slacking. I want this piece on my desk tomorrow. Yeah, this is a piece. Yeah, exactly. And so that's how those things sometimes take shape. And then when I read it online, I can't even engage with the negative reactions to it because I understand that it's deliberately provocative and it's funny when someone's mad about it, right? Because it's like it's so, it's just, you know, sometimes it can be so over the top or

so transparently provocative, trolling, whatever. So, but I guess that's, that's a little bit of its own genre too. But that's what's funny about that. And I would never, ever speak ill of Justin Charity, whom we, we know and love. But when I read pieces like against avocados or, you know, Apple suck. Basically, that piece is, you're right, those kind of pieces are absolutely written to be tongue in cheek, provocative, and trolly. But don't they to some extent, you know, rely on bad faith readings of those pieces to get major traffic because you know people online are going to take the bait.

And that's what's going to make that piece blow up. Oh, yeah, for sure. There's not enough of an audience that's like, aha, I appreciate the tongue and cheek quality of what you're doing, Mr. Critic, really what you want is you want that audience and then you want a whole bunch of people like, how dare you talk about avocados that way? Okay, yes, yes, but, and this may be steering its way, of course,

but as a connoisseur of the form, you know, or just as a reader of reviews for our entire lives, what's intriguing about those pieces is that it's a high wire act, right? It's like, can you get from this headline to a satisfying conclusion, and knowing that, knowing the stakes and like how kind of ridiculous this thing is, right? You want to see the performance. And to a certain extent,

that relates back to the great, well, hatchet jobs or even just negative reviews of the past century, which is to say it's actually not that hard to write a glowing review, right? You can say, if you read a book. Are you sure? No, no, no. I think those are actually harder than the hatchet job. I think with a, but, but,

The best of them are high wire acts, right? It's like you, it's difficult because you really have to earn it. Once you make people mad, they're going to read it, right? And you have to actually, like, have a basis for what you're saying. And you have to do the research and, you know, do the work and kind of get from Jonathan Franz and Sucks all the way to Jonathan Frenz and Sucks at the end of the piece. But like, you have to, you have to, I just think it's, to me. He really covered the waterfront from Jonathan Frenz and Sucks to he still sucks. You know, and I think, I think that in some ways that can.

be, look, when I would read Dale Peck, there is a sentence by sentence, sort of grandeur to it, and you would just, like, you could crack up from line to line. But if you're going to make a, if you're really going to critique a work of a major author, then you have to take the what made them great into account and everything else. You know, it's, I do think it's easier. It's not, not every positive review is easy. But I do think there is an easy way out, which is just like bullet point five things you really like about something. And then just be like, another great work by Martin Scorsese or like, whatever. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It can be a simpler form.

You mentioned knowing critics better, knowing critics in the old days like the way we know podcast hosts now. And in fact, Linsky in his piece, cites R. Siskel and Ebert podcast. And the fact that, you know, knowing those guys meant that you would forgive them things when you disagreed with them. Like, you know, Roger Ebert, four stars for Dark City, right? You're like, Roger, I think Dark City is like a three or three and a half term move. I think you're just a little too excited about this. But that's okay, because I know you, I like you. I'm interested in what your taste is.

What's interesting about that, the old critical world, is that these critics had powerful newspapers and magazines behind them that could back them up. And TV shows, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think to me, whenever I look at sports or, you know, any kind of journalism, what we're often talking about is power. And we're saying the Chicago Sun-Times. is a big newspaper and the TV show they're on is a big TV show and that's what's giving you

the stead to do this as opposed to the modern world where the journalist probably doesn't have as powerful a publication behind them and by the way when they're writing these pieces i mean it has got to be in some people's minds that i'm going to write a really nice piece about so and so and that person is going to tweet it and that is what is going to make the piece go viral or get a big audience, and that is what is going to allow me to write another story. Yeah. You know, the economy is just completely different. And that sucks that that would be what it is.

But there's no doubt that that's part of what it is. That so many of these things are written with an eye toward, you know, the way that I am, this piece is going to get read is for me to write something positive. And that's what's going to allow me to write another piece in this sucky, journalistic economy we live in. Well, yeah. I mean, listen, the biggest response I ever got to anything I written by a large, large margin was in the very beginning of the ringer. I wrote, you know, an appreciation of the rock. Just as like, what are the undeniable? You know, he was just like the rock is the greatest thing that ever happened. And it was, the positioning was actually a little bit

deliberately over the top two. That was sort of the point. But when that, when I, when that was tweeted out. I don't know if it was retweeted by the, you know, the Rock's account or whatever, but just every single response, and there were thousands were, well, not everyone, but the vast majority of them were people speaking directly to Dwayne Johnson, as if he was reading the comments on my piece, right? It was just like, Mr. Johnson, can you come to my kids prom? You know, like, it was just crazy. And you do get that sort of reaction, right? I mean, it's just big people, just sure, right? If that had been The Rock Sucks, it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention

and the attention that it gotten would have been like, I'm going to murder you. You know, it's like, it's a different, it is a really specific calculus. So yeah, I mean, that definitely happens. But I do think also that you're dealing with an audience of, your audience for everything is fans now, right? I mean, and this is getting, they get to this in the piece. Yes. When you, if you were to, you know, if you write, I mean, you know, pick your show, like whatever has any, you know, relevance right now, Ted Lassow.

If you, if you write a piece about Ted Lassau, the only people who are going to click on this piece are Ted Lassow fans, right? Nobody else cares about this. Nobody else is interested in reading a piece about Ted Lassow unless they've watched Ted Lassow. I mean, maybe there's a handful of people who watch it and hated it and are still, and want some validation in their opinion, right? but like for the most part even those people have their own things that they're fans of their own things that they want to fill their time with their own things that they care about and those are the things that they're going to be interested about reading about online if you watch ted lasso because your significant other is into it you're just like all right i'm going to read a book through the second half of this then when you pop online the next day you're probably going to be thinking about something else you know i mean it's not it's i just don't think people well i mean there certainly are people who go and seek out disappointments in life but for the most part i think that people are finding things they love and they care about and, you know, they get their kicks by loudly defending it online. It's absolutely true. And also, what about the critics who set themselves up to write about Ted Lassow or something bigger? Like, I'm your clearinghouse for

Ted Lassow recaps, talk opinions, or bigger than that, Star Wars, Mark, whatever it is. What happens, right, is you set yourself up that way, you cultivate this audience of fans, this audience you're talking about that just wants to read about that single subject essentially, or that's most of what they want to read, then are you allowed not to like the thing you're writing about? Are you allowed to be like, hey, uh, the bad batch? It was fine. Yeah. It was fine.

It was kind of a cartoon because sometimes doesn't the audience get really mad if you say that? And, you know, say, wait a second. I came here because we all love Ted Lassau and Star Wars. And you're telling me you only kind of love. of the most recent product of that universe. That's not what I signed up for. That is not what I want from you. And doesn't that discourage perhaps some nasty or critical opinions?

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's one obvious example of that, and that's Game of Thrones, right? I mean, people were made entire careers out of being Game of Throne critics and podcasters and whatever else. And by the end of the show, I think the general consensus had turned on the show to the point where, like, you were allowed to just be to shit on it, even if you were like the go-to person, right? Mallory and Jason, who did it at the Ringer, were, you know, not huge fans of the last season.

And I think they were open about that. Joanna Robinson of Vanity Fair. I think she was pretty critical of it, too. But when you're, this is part of the connoisseurism, you know, the appreciation culture, it's more about the people than it is about the art of the critique, right? So if you're, if this is Mal and Jason talking about Game of Thrones or if it's David and Brian talking about, you know, Star Wars or whatever else, when we're going to have these conversations, it's not just us shitting on whatever movie we just saw. You know, you find the things in it even amidst the shit that you like. Right. So you can, you can be the go-to game of Thrones person. You can say, you know, that episode wasn't that great, but you can still be like, look at all these Easter eggs, you know? Yes, they connect to the mythology. Let's, let's tease out how what we learned about the world. of whatever. Yep. Exactly. There's always things that you can, you know, it's just like everything else in life, man. I mean, if you're like, you know, at a really boring football game, you're going to start

like getting, you get your kicks by like loudly cheering ironically or like by, you know, by staring at somebody in the crowd or just whatever. I mean, you, you'll find other things to occupy your mind. That's what people will do in criticism now too. Yeah. And by the way, you'll let two or three years go by and then you'll go back and reassess the final season of the wire or the final season of Game of Thrones and welcome it back into the canon because even though it sucked at the time, right, we all do that thing. Our old Grantland teammate, Stephen Hayden jumped in the comments on one of the tweets about the Linsky piece and said this, re-music criticism. I think it used to be more common for certain critics to review everything, even albums and genres they might not know

much about. Now there are experts and enthusiasts for everything, so those people tend to review albums in their area of expertise. I remember when you and I were young and a Star Wars movie would come out or a comic book movie before we had comic book movies, you know, every other month. Do you remember how frustrated we used to get because there'd be some critic at the newspaper or at the magazine, but like, this person doesn't get this at all. Like this person doesn't appreciate Star Wars, whatever, in the way I do. They just completely don't. And it was so frustrating that we had to go to like, ain't it cool news or something to find somebody who actually was in the mythology. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that anymore. But what is really

funny about that is it has gone so far the other way that now I find myself driven back to the generalist newspaper critic. Tony Scott and the New York Times, the New York Times TV critics, certainly their book critics because I'm like, I want somebody who's coming at this without an investment in the mythology and in the fandom. Yeah. I actually want that critic now. Before, I was stuck with that critic. Now that is like my favorite critic because I actually trust them to give me a review and actually

pan something if they don't like it. Well, and also what there are so many other things available to you besides quote unquote criticism or reviews or whatever else, right? I mean, if you are a diehard Star Wars fan, you don't need to find, I mean, you certainly can, but you probably, you know, sated a lot of that thirst by, like, just reading the fan blogs and the Twitter accounts up to the point, right? Like, it doesn't need to be just the review of the movie. But, and the Tony Scott review, which has always been an important, you know, the, like, the New York Times movie reviews have always been an important part of the discourse. So Roger Ebert reviews when he was writing them, obviously like, you know, Pauline Kale before him.

I mean, they've always, that's always been an important sort of tent pull in the discussion. And as someone who's, if it's something you're interested in, you want to know what they say. So you can, you know, sort of react to it. It's sort of understand, even if it's a dissenting point of view, what it is. If it's a positive, you feel great about it, you know, but it is. But in a lot of ways, it's a totally different point of view. It's, it is an outsider point of view. Yeah.

Even if Tony Scott can write with a better eye towards, you know, whatever he saw at the film festival last month than most other people in the world, there's going to be some things that he still treats as an outsider. And when you're a generalist, even within a specific genre, you can be a generalist. You're going to be a little bit of an outsider on everything. That is how the world is changed. I mean, you and I both know, the world, writing for the internet is so much harder than it was writing in print. And because not only does, like, is all of the information available to. to everybody, right? It's like the barrier for entry is so much lower. A music reviewer in 1985, presumably spent more time listening to music and having her and having access probably

to like office music libraries or home music libraries that none of the readers had any access to, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it was, and the whole thing was, do you have all these, yeah, do you have all these CDs and discs in your house that you can go back and listen and reference? Yeah, and you don't. You don't. And so you would just take them at their word, right? If you're like, I don't remember, even if you thought you disagreed with them, you would just assume that they have the, you know, they're right and you're wrong. And now, not only does everybody have access,

the barrier for entry is so low in terms of just the knowledge base. All you have to do is pull up Spotify or whatever else, and you can YouTube and you can hear all the music. You can hear everything that is being compared to. But also, like, there are people who, one, are going to spend more time than every writer with this stuff, right? I mean, people who are monomaniacly obsessed with a certain subject that will know more than everything you write about. And they are present online as well as part of the discourse.

Like, they're, you know, they're replying to the tweets about your story. So it can be, it can be, like, paralyzing at times to be a writer. And it's, it's, you know, the idea of the generalist who is good at above all other things, reviewing of, like, critiquing. is still incredibly compelling. But it's hard to imagine a world now or in the future where there is more than a small handful of those people. You know, it's like you have to sort of earn your position as the critic of note, you know, and then to sort of,

I mean, then to a smaller degree, it's like everybody with a blog, which doesn't really exist anymore, but you know what I mean? It's like anybody with a personal outlet on Facebook or Twitter or whatever else, there's a lot of people who have, who are generalists and have a opinions about everything and don't need to like everything. But that's like a personal outlet, right? The idea of that being a position with a national platform, I mean, that might largely be behind us. I think so. It's just, it's the shrinking number of generalist outlets. You know, where are you going to go to do that now? The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington

Post. Is that going to exist at local newspapers? It does to a point, but they're shrinking, right? and those people in Fort War, Texas, can read the New York Times so that do they need, is the Fort War Star Telegram going to bother with a fully loaded, you know, music critic and movie critic and TV critic? Maybe not. It's an interesting. I do want to add one more point. And here I'm putting both hands on the electrified rails.

But as a lot of us transition from writers, first and foremost, to writers and podcasters. and need as part of our podcasting diet guests to come on our podcast, often the same guests who made the art or did the thing or were the sports commentator. Isn't there a danger that we start to pull a punch here and there? Maybe not dramatically so, but take a couple miles off the fastball to use one more sports metaphor because we want that person to come on our podcast. which has a good, you know, which then reflects well on us or drives traffic to the pot or whatever it is. Certainly, certainly an idea worth considering. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does feel like you have, I mean, this may be a small point in the argument, but it does also feel like as a reviewer, as a critic, as whatever our rules

are doing this sort of thing, that you may have more power than you had back then. I don't think anybody that gave a lesser Dylan album, a bad review had any question about whether or not he was going to be financially viable, like he was going to have money, you know, to live a year from then, right? This is Dylan or the critic we're talking about? No, the Dylan, you know, like, I'm not sure, but that's a good, that's a question, I mean, that's a good point too. I do think that, you know, that there's a humanity that's kind of imbued upon a lot of the people that you review now, both between, but both because of celebrities, being sort of ever present in media and you sort of know them in different ways and everything

else like we might know what we used to have known a reviewer but also just in terms of like this kind of stark humanity of it man you know it's like even if you hate something you're just like now listen i don't want brian curtis to lose his job right but maybe his podcast isn't great but like how much time am i going to spend like what if his employer hears me and they're just like you know what you're right brian you're fired like nobody wants i don't hate anything that much you know it has to be really bad I guess so. By the way, speaking of hatchet jobs, in the baffler, Dale Peck,

the aforementioned Dale Peck is out with a big critical piece about Andrew Sullivan. Who says the hatchet job is dead, David? The exception that proves the rule, maybe. There's one more thing, and I almost hesitate to mention it, but if you're talking about people coming on your podcasts and the way that might skew your review of something, you also have to consider the potential for future. employment with the people that you're reviewing and or the people that they're associated with,

right? Okay. There is a certain comfort that comes from being the film critic of the Chicago Sun Times. And when you become an institution, you can feel comforted that you will probably remain an institution for as long as you want to keep doing it, right? It's slightly different if you want to just completely go after a public figure who may or may not have, be an investor in some place that would want to hire you in the future. or they might have a personal relationship.

There's so many, I mean, listen, it's one thing to take to do with Martin Scorsese take down. You probably won't be crossing paths as Martin Scorsese. But if you wanted to do a, you know, I mean, if you wanted to do a barstool sports take down, and you basically have to just acknowledge, I'm never going to work for barstool sports, right? You may or may not want to, but like, as just an option.

I mean, it's just an example. And those things, I think, probably, you know, affect the way people right now too. It all comes back to power, right? And the stability of the profession. If journalists feel powerful, supported, like they're going to have a job in two weeks, you are much more willing to be a journalist in extremists. I want to talk to you, David, about Donald Trump's career as a sportscaster, about the NFL giving gambling a big hug, and maybe the weirdest use of oral history we have yet encountered. But first let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious

that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. In sports news, David, Derek Jeter, the Yankees shortstop, former Yankees shortstop, was officially inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame this week. People seized on this quote from Yankees manager and former Jeter teammate Aaron Boone. Derek was the guy who just said, give me the ball. always wanted the ball

and just played the game with a ton of confidence. It was an upward Twitter joke to write. I don't think you need to demand the ball in baseball. It's in the rules that the pitcher has to throw it towards you. Thanks to Terry McDonald. What interested me about that is that we are now just mixing and matching sports cliches. Yes, exactly. Like, give me the rock.

That does sound like something a noble player in basketball would do or even football would do, but you actually just cannot do that in baseball. To me, Derek Jeter was the kind of player who was never afraid to go over the middle, no matter what the defense was doing. You know, he was always there in the fourth quarter when the clock was counting down to help his team win. Yeah. Yeah.

He really was, wasn't he? Never afraid to take the big shot. Yeah, exactly. Gary Jeter. Thanks to Terry McDonald for that one. I guess pitchers, they do say that about pitchers. he demanded the ball every five days or he took the, right, took the mound every five days,

but it doesn't quite work with short stops. In U.S. Open tennis action, David, the men's number three seed, Stefano's Sitzipas lost to the Spanish player Carlos Alcaraz. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write that he could not escape from Alcaraz. Yes.

Thanks to Mike Miller. I think Carlos Alcaraz will probably be hearing that very badly strained pun for the rest of his career. If he continues to be good, if Carlos Alcaraz is the next Pete Sampras, is there a point where we have to like retire those puns? Yes. I think the time is right now.

But, you know, we can, yes, we can wait for a couple of major victories if you want to. Finally, this one, David, from last night's NFL season opener, where the Dallas Cowboys, of course, lost in the closing seconds to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. NBC, I don't know if he caught this, showed a shot of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in his suite. And he was accompanied by Ed Sheeran. Some good jokes on Twitter about that showing up at the arcade for my 10th birthday party with my dad.

Ed Shearin looks like Roger Goodell's son who didn't want to run the family business and works as a bartender instead. This was a good one. I don't need any more reasons to dislike Roger Goodell and sort of the inverse, just what I needed. another reason to hate Ed Shearin. Thanks to John Spalding. If you seized on a two second clip on Thursday night football, congrats you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David.

Let's hit a few of these quickly. This was from listener Odily. Thoughts on Donald Trump having an alt feed to call the fights this weekend. Is this peak podcast taking over sports? If you've not heard this, former president Donald Trump and Don Jr. are going to do one of those alternative commentaries for the boxing match this weekend between 58-year-old Evander Holyfield

and MMA guy Vidor Belfort. Do we have an opinion about Donald Trump providing an alternate audio feed? I got to admit, I'm more intrigued by this than I probably would have been if it was just a, you know, abstract, right? Because I honestly don't know, I can't even make a joke about what I think he's going to say.

I don't know if he's going to give even a passing effort at calling the fight or discussing what's on the screen in front of him. I don't know. And I'm not sure what it would sound like aside from, you know, his stories about meeting the fighters or something. I don't know what he would say if he did try. But I also don't, I can't quite fully imagine him just doing like a campaign. speech over the fight. Like, I just don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I can't quite imagine it. You think he's going to do the Troy Ackman thing where he says, you're absolutely right, Don Jr. after Don makes a perceptive point. Well, that's just saying, presumably Don Jr. is there to be

the sort of, you know, the person who knows who probably has more information on the fighters or on the, the, the fight game or whatever else we know he's a fight fan. Fight game. Presumably he would be in that role. But I, cannot in a million years imagine former president Donald Trump seating the floor to his son for any strength of time I mean any length of time.

So I don't know. Zero chance. I am betting the odds are one million to one that there will be perceptive boxing commentary on the Donald Trump alternative feed. And speaking of which Jim Lampley, legendary boxing announcer who was going to call this fight, has bailed.

I don't know that we know that it was directly linked to Donald Trump. emerging as the alternate commentary. But I think this will go down as the first time an announcer when faced with somebody doing the announcer's job, which is the tension behind all of this, has actually been like goodbye. Oh, you think it was related to, like,

we're now we're going to have two booths. And so he's like, no, you will not have me either. Well, I think it's probably more like Donald Trump being in the second booth. We think, again, allegedly. We don't know that. By the way, love this statement from Donald Trump. I love great fighters and great fights. I look forward to seeing both this Saturday night

and sharing my thoughts ringside. You won't want to miss this special event. Doesn't that sound like a press release Donald Trump would have released in like 1988? Mm-hmm. Like when there was a fight of his... Is he actually going to be a ringside?

Yeah, apparently. Doesn't that? He wants a good view. He wants to make sure he can see the angles. He does a... Donald Trump doesn't do remote broadcasting. Yeah. Like so many.

of the announcers today. Another one from the sports media pile. I got this press release from the NFL. It reads thusly, host Rachel Bonetta, formerly host of the gambling show on FS1, has joined the NFL media group. In her role, Bonetta will contribute

and lead legalized sports betting focused content, what a phrase, on NFL network as well as the NFL's digital platforms such as NFL.com and the NFL app. Rachel Beneta, David, brings gambling to the NFL. What do we think of that? Well, I mean, Rachel Benetta is just a pure talent, right?

I mean, everything that she does is she's very, very good at her job. And obviously has made sports betting a part of her brand. It's if it feels dirty to say it that way. But a part of her brand of, you know, something that she is known for over the past several years. Talking about high wire acts earlier, I respect that NFL press release for being as artful and dodging any of the sort of moral issues implicit in this as it was. Legalize sports betting focused content. We just want to make sure we're not endorsing gambling.

We're legalize sports betting. That is, we're going out of our way to say that. She's sort of a perfect fit for what the NFL network. Because at the end of the day, the number one thing is to, is not to, not to take on any previously prevalent moral issues about gambling, about betting. They're not, they want to avoid those all together. They hope that they never come up, right? That's, I mean, it's, it's, no, no one's going to sort of say, even mention the fact that

public perception is turned or that the law is turned or anything else. We're just going to pretend none of that other stuff ever happened. And I think that there's a lot of people who have sort of risen to prominence. over the past decade or so as voices in the sort of sports betting world who wouldn't be as desirable a choice for the NFL network because they don't they're probably trying to avoid the sheen of gambling altogether you know i mean it's legalized sports betting it's this is almost like w wcalling wrestling sports entertainment it's like we're just going to put our own little spender put a different name on this and uh and and and hope that nobody notices that we're

talking about the same thing i mean rachel benetta is is, well, I mean, I feel like we're just keep calling back. She's not a generalist per se, but she can do, I mean, she can do anything, right? The fact that she is a part, she's a kind of an accepted part of the sports gambling world now makes her a perfect fit for this job because she will not be mistaken for whatever the cliche of, you know, somebody who's spent 36 hours in the sports book losing money, you know, or anything else like that. I mean, she's, she's, she's not Jimmy the Greek. She's not Jimmy the Greek.

And Jimmy the Greek makes a lot of sense on a national broadcast when everything else is buttoned up. Right? But when you're the NFL, especially, this isn't ESPN or Fox Sports Making decision, this is the NFL network who has to be the last bastion of, you know,

opposing or whatever. I mean, the last bastion of goodness in the sports gambling world, because if it's perceived that they're overly interested in it, then that raises all of these questions about, about whether or not, I mean, about their involvement in it, right?

So it's, I mean, she's a proper journalist and it's good to have a journalist in that role. And she's, you know, she's sort of independent enough that it seems like that, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's independent and she's appealing enough that it's, you know, this is somebody you would want to see. This isn't just somebody with like a dog in the fight or a horse in the race or, you know, an illegal investment in it, you know, I mean, it's a horse in the race. you got as metaphorically closer to gambling content there. Yeah.

I don't think we fight dogs for money anymore. It is interesting though because it's like if this, it's almost like if you can get Rachel Bonetta in sort of under the wire, then we can just never have this conversation again, right? Like if they, if they brought somebody, if they brought Jimmy the, you know,

the reincarnation of Jimmy the Greek on the NFL network, people would have them, there'd be a minor tizzy or maybe a major tizzy. People would, you know, whatever. But like this is, the death knell of this whole conversation about whether or not sports betting should be allowed and whether or not the leagues should, you know, should be affiliated with it or not. And if, you know, if the NFL can hire Rachel Benetta and if this sort of goes off without too much

of a hubbub, then I think this is the end of the conversation. And, you know, thank God. Listener, Charlie Gilmer has further evidence that oral histories are taking over the world. You know Todd Haynes, David, the director who did Far From Heaven, Mildo Pierce fairly recently, has a new documentary about the Velvet Underground coming out, which played at Cannes and is going to be released next month. I want you to listen to this description of the documentary. This is a documentary movie, okay, directed with the era's avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews,

with dazzling archival footage. Now, wait a second. Unless I am completely misunderstanding what is happening here, we had a totally fine term for what Todd Haynes has made about Velvet Underground. The term was documentary film. Yeah. Or just documentary. But now the oral history brand has become so ever present.

So it's so clickable, you might say, David, that we are calling a documentary an oral history. So that means anything in which people start. speak is now an oral history. That is, that is, Rachel Benetta's new show will be an oral history of gambling. I'm going, I want to try to make the case for this. Okay. It is, it is absolutely inane.

But if you, if you felt compelled to distinguish between a documentary that was entirely primary source interviews with the people that mattered and a documentary that had a Morgan Freeman voiceover carrying you through half the story and like archival news footage and whatever else. Why do I have to choose between these two things? If you wanted to make it

clear, no, this is not just another, I don't know what the other thing would be. This is not another whatever voiceover documentary that takes you through the Velvet Underground's career. This is actually an interview with everybody that matters who is available to talk.

And it's only that. well, I guess that is a significant distinction if it matters, but it probably doesn't. You know what that sounds like to me? A documentary. Yes. That's what that's how. Interviews with the participants retelling the story of something that happened. Yes, that is a documentary.

No, I know. But maybe the problem is the documentary has gotten to ambiguous over the years, you know? I mean, like, listen, everybody who's listening to this is like gone to the documentary section of whatever streaming app they're on and. pushed a button and realized they were watching like an episode of investigation discovery, you know? And they're like, wait, this is, this is not a documentary by any definition that I'm familiar with. I guess it is. But I think documentary in general has gotten a little bit too fuzzy. Yeah, Netflix era. It really is, uh, everything is a documentary. But I, I'm

drawing the line, man. I'm done. Yeah, those like, kooky conspiracy theory documentaries that are on YouTube that have actually made their way onto Amazon and Netflix and other streaming platforms where it's like that one guy with the robot voice talking over like appropriated news footage or something like that's like that's is that a documentary you know how i feel about all this the documentaries in the long form podcast where it's like someone got murdered that's the that's the plot of every one of them hell you can i hate those so much you can call them moral history for all i care uh our only in journalism word of the day david comes from justin michael it's really good one i don't think we've had this one yet defang

Oh, defanged. There's no, well, there are very few people on earth that have used the word defanged in casual conversation. Yeah, I think that's. But a defanged federal agency is something you often read about in journalism. Thank you to Michael for that. It's time for David Chewmaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah.

The last time we did this, which I can't even remember the day, We did the Bears quarterback situation, and the headline was right to bear arms, question mark. It's like sometimes when I'm doing art for the ringer.com, if there's a more conceptual piece, so they're like, yeah, it's not just players facing off or whatever. I keep trying and trying. I can't figure out the right angle to make it look like a great, like New York Times op-ed illustration or whatever opinion page illustration. I can't figure it out.

And then at some point, I just go, you know what? I'm just going to take every single element that is that I've been working. with and put it on a black background and just sort of move things around and like there it is like everything's there it's fine that's what i feel about the right to bear arms it's like it's a pun because there are two puns you know it's like the sentence i'm not sure it's all there it's everything's there in front of you will accept it today's headline comes from j fisher it's a funny NBA story from the minneapolis star tribute i'll read it to you david timber wolves coach coach chris finch said Wednesday that Anthony Edwards,

former number one overall pick, has grown. By that, Finch didn't only mean Edwards is improving his game. He meant the 20-year-old guard has actually gotten taller from the time the wolves drafted him in November from around 6 foot 4

to approximately 6 foot 6. Okay, a basketball player is officially taller. What was the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Strain Punt Headline. Basketball, growth spurt, um, above the rim,

uh, tall, tall is kind of the word we're, uh, pivoting off of here. Tall. Oh, tall don't lie. Tall don't lie.

Is that right? Oh, yeah. Bang. He is David Shubaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Zervantes. We, uh, as we roll into this weekend, invite you to listen to our,

9-11 podcast interviews with James B. Stewart and Tom Juneau about pieces they wrote. After the terror attacks 20 years ago, we are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.