The Press Box - Michigan Protests, Cuomo on Cable, and Listener Mail | The Press Box

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker touch on the latest update from the president on reopening the economy and talk about the Michigan protesters, who had a lot to say (2:00). Then they discuss the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (17:30), Chris Cuomo’s comments about cable news (21:30), and finally, listener mail (31:55). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the press box on the Ringer podcast network is brought to you by World Central Kitchen. Their relief team is working across America to safely distribute individually packaged fresh meals and communities that need support. They're now serving tens of thousands of meals daily in some of our biggest cities like New York and L.A. And they're launching initiatives across America to deliver fresh hot meals to hospitals and clinics fighting on the front lines while keeping local restaurants and business as well. You can directly help the heroes in hospitals and clinics who are fighting for us, and you can help keep your local restaurants alive. Go to the ringer.com slash WCK to donate, please. We're trying to raise $250,000.

And if you have the means, it's an unbelievably great and useful cause that helps our heroes, emergency workers, and local restaurants. Please give whatever you can. The money goes directly to World Central Kitchen, and it's a charitable donation. Once again, that's the ringer.com slash W. UCK. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. This is the press box, and we got a lot of great stuff to get to today.

We'll talk about the existential crisis of CNN host Chris Cuomo. We'll answer your listener mail, including the question, are journalists eating healthier now that they're no longer on the road? Plus, David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's begin with something we've heard Donald Trump talk about day after day after day during our time of quarantine. That is reopening the economy. Yesterday in Michigan, we saw more than 3,000 protesters complete with Confederate flag because, of course, at the Capitol there, listen to this protesterer, explained to WOD in Grand Rapids why he was at the rally. Are you concerned about this virus?

I was in the beginning until I've done my research and found out the realities and the media's overreach on it and that it's not as serious as they made it out to be. And that's why I am here because I feel that they are overreaching, overreacting and crushing our small businesses, crushing our economy. I see you're wearing a mask so you appear to have some level of concern. I wish that didn't sound a little bit too much like something I've heard from very close friends and family members without naming any names. It is an unnerving reality. And I think you could probably draw a big picture. I mean, expand this out to the entire Trump presidency and the entire age we live in, that our own sort of selfishness, and in this case, stir craziness leads our minds to believe just about anything we wanted to believe. The crackpot sound really, really compelling when you're tired of sitting in the same room.

was your mother-in-law for the third week in a row. But yeah, it's really disappointing. It's also really interesting how those were identified. A lot of those rallies were identify Trump supporters, right? There's a lot of people out and make America great again hats at these rallies. And I couldn't help but be reminded of the sort of all the time we spent talking about the sort of dog whistle politics of the presidential election four years ago of Trump just sort of, he didn't have to say anything racist, but for the white supremacist to have

this implicit understanding that he was on their side, or at least that was their perception, even if it wasn't true from Trump's side. Now there seems to be this sort of like growing understanding that Trump doesn't, Trump wants the economy open so badly, and clearly he does, but like that everything that we're doing to stop the virus is no matter what Trump says and no matter what he agrees to in terms of stay at home orders and blah, blah, blah,

that he's implicitly opposed to all of it. and the best thing you can do to back him up as a Trump supporter is to violate the law. And it's, maybe that's obvious. But just looking at, I mean, if you kind of take a step back and look at it, it's like, is it impossible to wrap your mind around the idea that, yeah, nobody wants everything to be closed down. However, you know, we all know that this is best. We're willing to listen to the experts. No, if you want to back up Trump, according to apparently these people who are out there,

the best thing you can do is just start lighting torches. It's part of our political system where internet trolling, pro-Trumpism, blind pro-Trumpism, and just general rabble-rousing all comes together, right? And it doesn't really make any sense, you know, to do this. I mean, and to your point about this itself being a potential public health crisis, the protest being one. That's what Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said yesterday. She's got this stay-at-home order in Michigan until April 30th. She said yesterday,

I saw someone handing out candy to little kids bare-handed at the protest. People are flying the Confederate flag and untold numbers who gassed up on the way here grabbed a bite on the way home. We know that this rally endangered people, this kind of activity will put more people at risk, and sadly it could prolong the amount of time we have to stay in this posture. Right. So you want the stay-at-home order to end, and in order to do that, you violate the stay-at-home order, which will then potentially prolong. That's what happened yesterday in Michigan. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's nonsense. I mean, I can't even, like, my mind goes in 10 different directions, but, like, all of them lead back to, like, an excuse that one of my children makes

to stay awake longer at night or to, you know, to get what they want, which I'm just, I just shake my head. I'm like, you have to know that this isn't the best way to get there. If you were trying to convince me of your bad plan, this would be the worst possible way to do it. Yeah. I mean, this is, there's so much about the world that we live in in this moment that is unbelievable. I keep coming back to just like the sort of resiliency of humanity that if you had told any of us three months ago, that we would be confined to our homes for weeks or months and that we would all just kind of figure out a way to make that happen. No one would have believed it. I mean, honestly, if you had told me how long I was going to be, you know, away from home at the

moment that I left, I might have had some excuses to stay, you know? I mean, it's like, but everything's great now. I'm happy that I'm away. I'm happy that I'm here. It's just like, we're very resilient. It's, uh, if you had told me though, if you had told me two weeks ago or even a week ago that there would be masses of Donald Trump protesters out rallying against stay at home orders, I would have said that was too silly to be true. And yet here we are. And here we are. By the way, on the subject of the Confederate flag inevitably appearing at this rally in Michigan,

which is probably not having the Confederate monuments crisis that several other states in the country are at the same degree. I just remember, you know, when I was a young cub reporter, I'd cover like a Bush v. Gore protest or an Iraq war protest.

And there would inevitably be at this liberal protest like a free Mumia sign. You know, like wait, are we doing everything to? today? You know, is this, is this just everything came together? But the conservative version of this is, is there not anybody, is there not a leader of the protest yesterday who can be like, okay, can we just leave the stars and bars at home today, maybe? It's just a, let's focus here. We're not, we're not doing Confederate nostalgia today. We're doing, we're doing, we're doing,

reopen the government. Nobody can say that's probably not a, these, these are not the same thing. Yeah, these are probably people that show up, uh, realize they forgot to bring a sign. They look around everybody else has a sign. They're like, shit, well, what do I have in my trunk? You know, I mean, they have something to bring. But seriously, it's an identity thing. And I think it's an identity thing increasingly more, I mean, maybe, I'm sure this has been

discussed and written about ad nauseum, but even more so in the north than it is in the south. There's a, you know, I mean, I spend a lot of time in sort of blue collar Pennsylvania, and there's Confederate flags just flying on front porch. There's a weird coincidence of, or incidents of the Confederate flag seems to always, always be flying on the houses that have no trespassing signs in the windows that you would never have any interest in trespassing. You know, it's just like the scummiest house in the neighborhood has a hilariously unnecessary no trespassing sign. And then next to it will be either don't tread on me or the stars and bars. It's a, you know, it's an unfortunate

series of events. But, but you're right. I mean, it doesn't help anybody's cause to be waving that thing around. David was going to diners in rural Pennsylvania before going to diners in rural Pennsylvania was cool. Let's put it that way. David, we know Trump's strategy for winning in November was built on having a roaring economy. Well, counting this morning's job numbers, 22 million Americans have claimed unemployment now over the last four weeks. So Trump wants everybody to go back to work or a lot of people to go back to work. He set May 2nd as a target date, but there are problems with that, right? Despite Trump's claims that press conference yesterday, we don't have enough coronavirus tests. The New York Times said that although

capacity has improved in recent weeks, supply shortages remain crippling and many regions are still restricting tests to people who meet specific criteria. Antibody tests, which reveal whether someone has ever been infected with the coronavirus, are just starting to be rolled out and most have not been vetted by the FDA. There's also this sense that you hear from the Trump administration that we can somehow do this nationally. Right? Now, he's flip-flopped on this. I can, he said earlier this week, I can compel states to kind of

reopen, right? That was that total authority moment. The next day, he was out in the Rose Garden saying, actually, I can't do that. The states are going to all open when they want to. And now we've seen as part of this bizarre experiment in federalism, states

banding together as these like subgroups of Marvel superheroes to try to do stuff in spite of the Trump. There's this East Coast coalition. Doesn't this all sound like escape from New York or some post-apocalyptic thing? Yes. This East Coast group of states, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, etc.

They're working together on the West Coast out here. It's California, Oregon, and Washington. And the idea is the feds don't know what they're doing, but we like-minded little states in this cluster will have a better idea about when and if we should open our economy. Yeah, I mean, it's like there's like a reverse walkout. like you have to have to plan so that because one person walking out of a you know of your workplace means that one person gets fired or whatever yeah i mean it's just it's you band together in the name of protest but also in this in this case it's you know it's functional decision making

right if nobody trusts the way the decision making is happening um yeah you got to have these little super friends team ups to like to make it seem like you're not just any i guess any one person can be painted as an enemy of trump right uh it takes it takes a co it takes a co-it takes a co-ex to try to, you know, combat that perception. There was a great quote in the Washington Post, I think, that really gets at this idea of reopening the economy and the way the administration is thinking about this. The speaker, who was anonymous, is an administration official, and the official is talking about people inside the White House who want the government to open up. The official says, quote, they already know what they want to do,

and they're looking for ways to do it. They think it's time to reopen because some Some thought it was never time to close, and they've made that up in their minds. Oh, my God. That's a really key idea here, right? You're dealing with people who did not think we should have taken these steps to begin with. Do not think the economy should have closed down. So when we're saying, wow, you seem like you're recklessly trying to reopen the economy, they recklessly didn't want to close the economy.

They were happy to leave it up to the individual states to do that, right? Including states in South Dakota, where we now are we now. see outbreaks him. Sorry, go ahead. Well, no, no, I mean, and who knows what the actual sequence of events that led us to the closure, to the stay-at-home orders, and to everything, all of the actual, you know, reasonable, cautious stuff that Trump has said over the past couple, a month or so. But, I mean, for a man that cares so little about presidents, about, about norms, about, you know, business as usual in the government, about, you know, separation of powers. I mean, what a fucking baby to be sitting there

and crying about like a decision his own administration made in the you know i mean it's not like somebody like put out a law and he was like oh shit you got to it before me you know i mean it wasn't like someone else is is giving these two-hour press conferences every night you know he's proven before that the things he says how loud in press conferences can pass for you know can pass as like a government a government edict you know i mean it's all he has to do is change it and he but he knows it's not good enough. He's just, he knows that decisions to stay at home, to have business shut down.

He knows that they're right. He's just I guarantee he's just justified it as being someone else's call so that he can complain about it to himself. Well, his two solutions seem to be give another press conference and say potentially wildly contradictory things. Number one, or number two, form a group.

Form a panel of some sort. Like Jared Kushner has a panel, right? This week we saw the formation of more panels, and I'm actually a little bit confused about what these are, even have to read in the articles. I believe there is a blanket name called the Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups, which is a really, yeah, the Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups. That is not an acronym as far as I can tell. Yarrig, I don't think so. I think that's just a really long name. That sounds like a chapter

in your like AP U.S. history textbook that you just definitely didn't want to read. I'm going to skip right on over that. On Monday, some administration officials gave Trump a list of executives who could possibly be on one of these panels. There was one problem, reports the Washington Post. These executives, quote, have not yet been formally notified that they could serve in an advisory role.

The Post would later report the debate this week has been over how to implement the return to work, what data could be. used to justify the decision and how to build public support for it to provide the president maximum political cover. So wait, some multi-millionaire CEO is going to give Trump political cover for this controversial and potentially deadly plan to return to work, but then you did not bother to tell the CEO that they were going to be doing this. On Wednesday, this all came to a head. Per the New York Times, Pfizer was blindsided by its inclusion in the group. receiving a heads up that Mr. Trump might mention the company an hour before the announcement.

A lobbyist tells the Washington Post, and this will resonate with anyone trying to do a podcast during these times, we got a note about a conference call, like you'd get an invite to a Zoom thing, a few lines in an email, and that was it. Then our CEO heard his name in the Rose Garden. What the expletive. My company is furious. Oh my God. So that's how that came together. then as Jonathan Chate points out in his column in New York Magazine, and I cribbed a bunch of links from him for this segment, when those executives finally got on a conference call with Trump, I guess this Zoom meeting,

what did they encourage him to do? They encouraged him to do mass testing. Yeah. They didn't say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, reopen the economy. They said, no, no, no, we want you to do mass testing. That's what we need to get back to work in America. That's the prerequisite.

So just think about how this all went around. Trump rallies a bunch of CEOs whom he hopes will give him cover to send America back to work and the CEOs say no, no, no, we just want you to do what the scientists say you should have been doing this whole time, which is ramp up testing.

That's where we are. And again, we're way past our discussions of, you know, Trump being tossing an overhand pitch right over home plate and just like deciding, you know, to whatever, drop trial instead of swing the bat. But like, this is like asking for like insisting on more testing.

Like this isn't, this isn't like mutually exclusive from a, from a move towards reopening the economy. It's a, it's a measure in that direction. And it would be really easy from to at least just say it out loud, even if you didn't fucking mean it. But no, I mean, he's just like,

for whatever reason, the only path forward to him is kind of, you know, plug my ears and close my eyes and wish everything back to the way it was. It's very strange. Chris sent us a picture from Columbus, Ohio, I'm sure you saw this. So the protesters sort of smashed against the walls. The windows of the state house there.

Densely packed crowd. Everybody looks angry. Some really good Twitter jokes. The Walking Dead season 2020. The other one was 28 business days later. Which brings us, David, to the Overwork Twitter joke. 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.

received. We got this from Gary Dixon as a kind of starter. He says, as the arbiters of overworks, are you guys able to put out a decree banning X in the time of coronavirus tweets and headlines? I feel like we've all suffered enough from that one, and full disclosure here, guilty of it myself. I don't know. I mean, you and I'm not going to name any other names, but we've discussed offline the sort of prevalence of, you know, fill in the TK, TK, TK, TK, and then came came coronavirus headlines. Yeah, the Judo Chop. Yeah.

He was a doctor. He was a doctor who saved lives. Then came coronavirus. Yeah, exactly. He had a great idea to group source trash pickup and then came coronavirus. Blank in the time of coronavirus is a welcome reprieve to some of the stuff we're saying out there. I got to tell you.

At least your mind is taken away to a wonderful literary landscape and not just this crazy world that we live in. But anyway, I think it's fine. We can ban that too. We can ban that. It is time to socially distance from that headline. David, on Wednesday, John Carl, CNN White House correspondent and author of a new book, was at Donald Trump's news conference in the Rose Garden.

He tweeted, yikes, a rat just scurried by on the steps behind the president. A rat. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write The Departed 2006. That was, you remember. the end of the movie. That's fantastic. Trump named part of his council to reopen America. We know Trump likes to leave policymaking to the moguls.

Did you see the bit where it had a Fox News graphic of who was on this council? And then the people were Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly, Scrooge McDuck, Arthur Slugworth, who I'd forgotten about, and Richie Rich. Thanks to Ken Barrett for bringing our attention to that one. And finally, David, a sad story out of Hollywood. after two seasons, CBS has canceled the show, God friended me. God friended me. I'm sure that was high on your cue there. A lot of good lines about that. God unfriended me.

God blocked and reported me. And my personal favorite, God turned out to be a Russian bot. If you improved significantly on the concept of God friended me, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. We've got the notebook dump coming up. David, but before that, let's take a quick break. Hey, what's up, everybody? I'm Jamel Hill. And I'm Van Laid. We're proud to introduce our new podcast, The Wire, Way Down in a Hole.

We're going to recap, breakdown, and analyze every episode of the iconic HBO hit series, The Wire, starting from the beginning with season one. First episodes hit you on April 15th. Now, every podcast episode will include recap, signature moments, foreshadowing, key character, deep dives, little known facts, and also awards such as we love this show, but the Stringer Bell Fuck Boy Award, my personal favorite, who won the episode and more.

So subscribe to The Wire, way down in a hole on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, and we'll see you in West Baltimore on April 15th. Okay, in the notebook dump, David, against my better judgment, I want to talk about Chris Cuomo. Yeah.

You had this moment on the radio the other day that we're going to play for you. was it performance art? Was it a little bit indulgent? Yeah. But much like the Dan Lebitard crisis of conscience, we talked about last summer, remember when he was responding to a Trump outrage on ESPN radio,

we know that a genuine crisis often makes a media member ask, what am I doing with my life? So let's listen to Cuomo and talk about what he's saying about cable news. I don't like what I do, professionally, I've decided. I like doing this show. I like talking to you guys. But I don't value indulging

irrationality, hyperpartisanship. I don't think it's worth my time anymore. Why? Because I don't want to spend my time trafficking in things that I think are ridiculous. I don't want to spend my time on television. talking to Democrats about things that I don't really believe they mean.

And I don't want to spend my time talking to Republicans about them parroting things that they feel they have to say. And analyzing the presidents who we all know is full of shit most of the time by design. My first reaction to this is that I can't imagine a more spot-on critique of our, of, the of the television political news industrial machine. Kind of gives a game away, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's something that we all say, but I think that if you've watched Chris Cuomo over the past couple of weeks, and I have to admit, I have watched a little bit,

you could see the existential crisis coming, you know? I mean, he was sitting in his basement, which is so pristine. It looks like a painting, like a Hollywood set of a basement or like a green screen. basement sitting behind him, where day after day, he kind of goes deeper into kind of the reality it's coronavirus and the implicit, you know, sadness and tragedy that's tied to it. You had to wonder also watching him why he was still doing it, right? I mean, there's a sort of like propulsion that keeps us all going in this day and age. But for everybody that we see on TV, I mean, obviously we got to fill up, we had to fill it up, but if you're, I mean, he's suffering,

he is in, he has coronavirus, right? He has COVID-19. And the, the, decision was made between him and the bosses at CNN to keep going. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I wonder to what degree it was discussed, like, what the other options were, you know, because it does feel a little bit like, despite everything he's saying now, having him continue on is, I mean, if anyone else is involved in the decision is like stunt casting, right, or stunt booking, you know, I mean, you're just like, hey, this guy actually has a disease and he's in his basement right now with a, you know, the medicine sitting next to him or whatever. I mean, it's just, it's, it's, there's a lot there. But to what he

actually said. I'm sure that there are a lot of people on who have similar jobs to him that are like, yes, we've been, we've been thinking this or we've been complaining about this behind the scenes for years. I'm not sure that it's going to make a lot of difference to what we see on, you know, our big news channels on a nightly basis. Yeah. I mean, I, so a couple of things.

You're right about, I didn't even think about the fact that, you know, he had, he is recovering from coronavirus. So naturally your mind goes to different places. right? You're recovering from... And by the way, he specifically said just the other day that he believes there is a mental component to coronavirus, that the sort of depression that he's going through, I mean, that he's feeling, or not clinically depression, obviously, but his mind is suffering as well. So again, you can see it coming.

Yeah. And then I think the other thing he's touching on there, as you point out, is about the artifice of cable news, right? Even if you style yourself as a huge, big, booming truth teller like Chris Cuomo, your job is essentially bringing on Republicans who are going to lie on the air and you have to yell at them bringing out Democrats

who let's say in this world they're not lying in quite the same way or they're not as they have fealty to a leader like Trump in quite the same way but how much are you really accomplishing there? That's hit and his show is trying desperately to not be partisan right so he has to be this guy

who's bringing all kinds of people on and often getting mad at them. And he is in that clip wondering, like, is this a good use of my time or really anybody's time? Good question, right? Like, really good question. And one that, you know, we've seen cable news try to approach them different ways. MSNBC has tried to approach them a way of kind of like, okay, we're just going to bring kind of like-minded, mostly liberal people on here. We won't have a lot of like, You won't hear a lot of really Republican voices, but the idea is you'll probably get more truth onto this, right? That's how they've approached that question.

CNN's approached in a totally different way. They're not trying to be the anti-Trump news network, though they are very skeptical of Trump in a lot of ways. But that's a weird place to be. There's a lot of artifice in that. The other thing I'd say, and this applies to probably a lot of people we know out in the world, at least in sports, is that when you get more and more successful, especially in television, you are required almost always to do dumber and dumber things as part of your job. Let's say you're a really smart person who's a writer or a smart person who's a podcast, whatever it is.

When you go to TV, it's almost like you have to take 15 miles per hour off your fastball at least. Right. And you watch, and we've seen this all the time. You watch these people and we're like, man, I love that person. They're so great at what they do. Oh, they got a promotion. They got a TV show. This is awesome.

And then you watch a TV show and go, oh, wait, they're not doing what I like about what I liked about them in the first place. In fact, they're kind of doing the opposite. And I almost detect a little bit of that. Chris Cuomo has climbed to the top of the cable TV mountain and then goes, this is it. This is what I do every day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think we all have witnessed.

what you experienced. I mean, it's hard to, I mean, I think, listen, I think we're all sort of, those of us who are fortunate enough to still be employed in the recession that we're in right now, I've probably all spent some time

sort of questioning what we're doing, or at least questioning their balance of what we're doing, either work-life balance, spending so much more time with our families, a lot of us, or, you know, or the balance within the job itself. When you're, I mean, when you have multiple things going on,

you wonder which the things are more important at this moment. Then you start thinking about which the things are more important, full stop, you know? And you're right. I mean, Chris Cuomo occupies a really interesting, you know, place in the media landscape on his own. The first time I saw this, I was just sort of like, I mean, I think my, part of my first reaction was wondering whether or not this was like, he's moving towards politics or something. You know, he's going to just like go and walk about. Like, what does this mean? But I think that the, but I think that the, I think looking at it through that land.

is almost just like doing the same thing that he's complaining about doing, right? Not everything is a move towards something else. Not everything is a sort of like calculated, like a calculated venture in this, you know, media landscape. If we, if I had heard this prior to coronavirus, I think I would have thought with 100% certainty that he was either quitting or he was like trying to get out of his deal

so that he could go work at MSNBC who had already secreted him an offer, you know? but I think that to really take what he's talking about, I mean, to really do it justice and to really think deeply about it, I think that we look around, I think we're all thinking these things, you know? I don't think we don't all necessarily have the platform to say it.

Not people, radio shows aren't calling us to talk about it. No, absolutely not. And by the way, when you say go out and be in politics, I think if I'm sort of diving into his head, that's another part of this, right? We talked about the Cuomo brother show. Oh, my brother, he's doing stuff.

Right. He's being an idea. Now, I'm doing something too, not underrating what the media is doing and all this because he's got an important job too. But look at that. My brother's really doing something. Is there something more important I could be doing? But I'm with you to your last point. I'm, whenever anybody says anything like this, they get shouted down. They get made fun of. They get rained back in, usually by their employer. As you saw this, Cuomo basically went on TV the next day and said, I didn't mean this. I didn't mean it. He had to, of course, because you can't. You can. You can. can't give the game away and then go back on television and be that guy on CNN. But I'm, but I'm pro doubt. And I think we should, when media members step back and say, is this what I should really be doing? Or is this the way I should be doing my job? I think we should encourage that, right? Because I think every one of us could probably, as you say, stand to have that conversation, right? Always remind ourselves, even if you're not doing anything pernicious or evil or whatever it is to just say, is this really what I should be doing with my life? Yeah. I mean, that benefits everybody. And so much of media is like wrestling where even, you know, and again, there's a ton of

sports jobs that apply this where you just can't, we're somehow admitting that maybe you're not doing the most important thing in the world or you're not doing it in the best way that you possibly can is just like, oh my gosh, sacrilege, right? Oh, you can't say that. Yes, you can. And people should be encouraged to. Totally agree. I mean, this is a very small version of that, but like, you know, we have the luxury of working for a website. We both worked at Grantland before the ringer, but a place that encourages long-form writing and deep thinking. And I'd say that, like, I mean, this is just a guess, but I bet if you look back through like the greatest hits of the ringer and the Grantland catalog, about a solid 50% of the best long-form pieces came to a point

where the writer asked him or herself the question, why am I writing this piece halfway through? Like, what is the purpose of, like, why am I doing? this. And wrestling with that sort of question in real time in very small instances can have wonderful results. But I think, you know, what we're talking about is it sort of, you know, zoomed out a little bit more. Just because you quite, just because you're wondering of what you're doing is the best use of your time and the best way you can contribute to the world doesn't mean that you're not doing your job. It probably means you're doing a better job. And the person sitting next to you who's like, you know, you know, pushing ahead with blinders on.

Let's do a little listener mail as we ponder our own existence here in the media sphere. This one comes from Brandon James Anderson. He writes, can you guys please just riff for like six minutes on the sublimely absurd daytime TV ads? We are all watching a lot more of lately. I just watched Ice Tea spend over a minute pitching something called Car Shield. And apparently, IceT said it doesn't take a detective to know we all use our cars. That was the line. I'm amazed by this because like you used to have to like seek out like Glenn Beck show to find gold.

old ads. And that's so weird. But now, and I, and I don't know if this is a, I should probably check on this, but like if you watch those classic games on ESPN, there are a bunch of very like low for, low grade for ESPN ads appearing in those things. Yeah. It really reminds me of watching UHF stations in childhood. What is the, what is the word for this?

I totally am blanking on it. What is the word for when the ads that just sort of come out of the slush pile when it's just like you don't have, when you haven't sold another ad and then there's just like a, Fox News would always get in trouble or advertisers would always get in trouble for something that Bill O'Reilly said and then they would be like listen we didn't target Fox News we just paid like a thousand dollars to have our ad

in the slush pile and whenever they didn't sell an ad they would just roll one on but regardless there is a lot of that and even when it's not there's a lot of slush pile. Huh? There's a lot of slush pile. And even when it's not slush pile maybe it's even when you've seen the same ad

two or three times that's when it really starts hitting home where you're just like I think I've made this joke before but like when you're watching it. watching MSNBC during the day and you realize that you've seen the same ad for, you know, some medication that specifically targets like 90 plus people. You're just like, this really isn't meant for me. Like I understand whatever I'm watching, like I'm not the target audience for.

It's really bizarre. And it's interesting that the, I mean, I know that the, you know, marketing departments don't aren't flush with cash, you know. I mean, we're all suffering financially, I think, in this, at this point in time. But it's interesting. It's weird to me that there hasn't been more of an uptick in the sorts of ads that we see during those times. I mean, honestly, it's like, let's make a deal as the new Super Bowl. I mean, everybody's at home watching TV.

But yes, if you watch TV during the days, you see a bunch, a bunch of crazy stuff. I saw that iced tea commercial and was kind of confused as to what in the world I was watching. It's a close second to the Dremont Green's Smile Direct Club commercials that used to run all the time with him and his mom. I don't know. It's just like I get entranced trying to do the math of how much money it would take ice tea to do that commercial, that commercial. And same with Draymond Green. It's like what how much money does it take to get Draymond Green his mom to show up to do this commercial? And then you start looking at a salary. You pull out the pen and paper. It's it's it's a it's fun to think about. Uh, note from Yale Park. Our journalists, particularly sports journalists, eating healthier now that they're no longer on the road. Also, what's the most unusual thing you've cooked? baked eaten during quarantine. You and I used to joke all the time. This was a Brian Curtis special about how crazy.

This is when we were single and young and whatever else. There is nothing more irritating than like the idea of someone like sitting down at the table at Chili's and just being like, do I want dessert? Hey, I'm on vacation, you know, and just sort of like as if the rules are different. Now we're old enough to know the rules actually are sort of different. When you, that if you don't eat well, at least most of the time, you're, you know, going down a bad road. But yeah, I mean, listen, there's, there, there, there are. is there is a definitely an obscene joy that comes with walking into a basketball arena and just being like yes i'll have one of each you know and just and just indulging yourself on all that crap

there because you know you're going to be eating like you know granola and salads when you get home um i think but but worse than what i experience and probably what you experience on the regular are like we you know you hear from our writers about the NFL training camp tours about you know when you're on the road like following a basketball team or like for a story something like that you you end up eating 95% of your meals at whatever drive-thru is open at the odd hour that you are freed to go back to your hotel. And you got to think that, I mean, we experience that on a, I mean, I experienced that in a micro level when I'm like, you know, when I decided to go to the McDonald's with my

kid or whatever, and I'm just like, I'm going to do it up. And then like I get halfway through the food that I ordered and I'm rolling on the ground. It's clear that there's, sorry about to our sponsor McDonald's. it's clear that it makes a difference. I assume everybody's eating much better, although I say this. I'm eating way better than I do, and I'm not usually on the road.

But every day I open the freezer, and I'm just like, I can't wait until the circumstances get dire enough that we have to heat up those fish sticks. Like, that's what I look at. That's what I think every day. Chad Orzel writes this, if you could reopen one and only one business right now

with a magic guarantee that it would remain virus-free, what would it be? I mean, do I have to, is this for my own personal pleasure? Sure, why not? For society's good? I would do your own, I think. I mean, it would be wonderful if like, you know, if there was like a, like, Central Park in New York could be open and tent-free and virus-free for all the people that live around it.

I mean, there's some like, you know, greater good question here. But if it's just me, I talked about a bowling alley last week. I mean, it would be really fun to go to a bowling alley. Although the lines are probably long as hell if it was the only one open. I don't know. The Longhorn Steakhouse the other day or something. By the way, we got takeout from the Longhorn Steakhouse. You did.

Our family's one indulgence over the past two months was a, my wife went, I think with the kids and just sat in the parking lot while people in like, you know, containment suits came out and took your order and then like, you know, eventually, in 20 minutes later, walked it out to your car. I miss used bookstores and I worry about used bookstores. Oh, yes. I follow like at least one of them on Instagram. They're always, you know, kind of like sadly throwing up pictures here in Orange County of all this great stuff.

And I'm like, man, that is an act I miss, you know, just walk in the world. Yeah. I mean, just I don't even think that, you know, the people younger than us really indulge in this as much as we do. It's somewhat a generational thing. But the idea of just spending time out, you know, spending time in a store. Yeah, I miss that a lot. We'll do a couple of these quickly. Cinema Joe's podcast asked, do you think the layoffs that media comes?

companies will be reversed after the pandemic ends or will this further contraction of an industry in decline be permanent? I'll take that one. I think it's mostly going to be permanent. And especially when we think of print jobs, if you have a newspaper that has like 10 people in the sports section, and let's say they've downsized during this to 7, do you really believe they're going to come back with 10 people in the sports section when this is when and if this is over? Or is 7 going to be the new normal? I think it's going to be 7. You know, I think that a lot of those jobs are going to disappear. Not all of them.

You know, when we talk about ESPN or Disney, you could imagine a, you know, a time when, you know, if they, if they wind up, especially ESPN is not downsized officially yet. But if they do that, they could roar back at some point. But writing jobs? No. No. This feels permanent to me. I'm inclined to agree with you. I think there'll be some jobs that come back.

I think there are certainly some businesses, especially smaller businesses that are that are dealing with urgent realities. And we know that, you know, from just recent history. that there's a lot of journalistic outposts, websites, magazines, whatever else that are sort of just getting by month to month. Hopefully there are, I mean,

there's some that are either going to shut down or be forced to rehire, you know, rehire some amount of people. But then you look at instances like, I was reading, I don't know if you saw that essay, Todd McCarthy wrote, and the Hollywood Reporter, I think it was yesterday, which just narrated his own,

his own firing and by the Hollywood reporter. And at the very beginning of it, it's a great piece. Everyone should read it. There's a, it takes you through sort of a whirlwind tour of a couple of decades of, you know, Hollywood journalism and job security, the job security therein. But at the very beginning, he talks about the fact that he got a raise like two months ago, an unexpected, like healthy raise. And now he's out on the street.

Now, I guess there's some conspiratorial view that, like, he gave him a raise so that you could put him in a bracket. that necessitated is firing, but I think the greater likelihood is that the people that are calling for the firings, the people that are mandating the layoffs are not the same people who are in a place to make a judgment call about what your outlet,

what your journalism enterprise even needs. So the idea that they're going to like, that someone's going to be reversing course two months from now just because the economy is better, I mean, they wouldn't have, a lot of these layoffs wouldn't have happened if the people that actually had an idea, of what the production was.

A lot of these labs wouldn't even happen if they were aware enough to look at what they did, you know? So I think it's really unlikely that a lot of the jobs are going to return. Last one here from Alex says Katie Nolan had a cool segment where she and several others at ESPN competed to see who could get the most famous person to join their Zoom chat. Who are the most famous people that Brian and David could get to hop on a random Zoom call? Isn't the answer to this bill? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know that there's anybody that would like immediately answer the phone that would be anywhere near as, as famous as Bill. I have Carl Roves number. Do you still have Carl Roves number in your phone? I don't know if he counts for a while. You have some good, you have some good like political and sports contacts. I don't know if they'd answer a Zoom right. I mean, a Zoom request. But you presumably you get to tell them, right? I mean, you're not, you don't just send it out and just say, hey, jump on this at seven o'clock. I don't know. I would, I would suggest that the press box listeners go back through the Brian Curtis Uvra and just see the names that have appeared more than once. I think, I think his Rolodex could get us through some tough times. If that way, if this game were actually a game of life or death, you know, I think that we'd see Bob Costas's his face pop up on the Zoom call before in relative. I don't want to speak for Bob. I don't want to speak for Bob. But if he'd do it maybe if we ask politely. All right, time for David Schumaker. Guess is a strange. pun headline. Tuesday's headline about crossword puzzles was

here's looking at you, grid. That's great. Today's headline is from Darcy Dannaher. It's from the age, the newspaper in beautiful Melbourne Australia, one of the best cities in the whole world. David, Australia is facing the same challenges we are over here. People are going to the beach.

They're playing soccer. They're having lunch despite orders to stay at home and social distance. This headline is really Dada. So it may be impossible to guess. But it's based on Winston Churchill's famous, We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches speech. We shall fight them on the beaches.

What was the ages strained pun headline? So people are still going to the beach? Does it matter that it's in Australia? No. We shall fight them on the beaches. I don't even know this quote. I don't even know this quote. It's this.

I just remember there's like we shall fight them on the streets and we shall never surrender or something. It's like. Yeah, you're going to want to rhyme with beach. And this is like in the words of a mayor who's trying to enforce the law. We shall fight them on the. On the, we shall fight them. This is so, uh, fight them on the. I really want to say breaches just because it's that you,

you got it. Is that it? We'll fight them on the breaches, says mayor. All right. I'm on the breaches. All right. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis's research by Chris Almeida, production.

production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. And David, let us discuss the plight of the indie bookstore. See you then, my man. See you later, Brian.