The Press Box - More Ford-Kavanaugh, the "Rebirth" of the NFL, and Michael Moore | The Press Box (Ep. 533)

Episode Date: October 2, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker take a look at Senator Flake and other figures from the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings (03:00), the rise in NFL ratings (25:15), and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9" (37:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly, here to tell you that we have a brand new podcast called Halloween Unmast, premiering Monday, October 1st. Here's a sneak peek. There's trouble in the suburbs. A teenage girl named Lori Strode crosses a quiet street toward an ordinary house to find her friends. But Lori doesn't know that her friends are dead, and she doesn't know that she's walking right toward the masked killer of Michael Myers. The movie is Halloween. And Halloween just, it was like a breath of fresh putrid air. He's a pure unknowable evil. I'm film critic Amy Nicholson and this is Halloween on Mast, a podcast series from the ringer celebrating the remarkable and terrifying rise of America's

most revolutionary horror film. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast to Halloween Unmast and watch your back. I think the scariest part was that he doesn't die at the end. So when you're 10, it's like, that guy's still out there. We got to get him. David, some people on Twitter mistakenly thought that Jamel Hill, the former ESPN commentator, announced she was joining the athletic instead of joining the Atlantic. What I want to know is, is there any difference between the athletic and the Atlantic?

Some people on, thank you for, thank you for trying to bail me out of just saying, David, you are the person who thought that she was joining the athletic instead of the Atlantic. Yeah, you did send me that email this morning. Had to do a correction. Yeah. No, I know. I'm always happy anytime, you know, I can get one website confused with another. I mean, they do look a whole lot of like.

But I think the real issue here is that The Athletic has hired so many people that you could say I'm joining any website where the Twitter handle is, you know, at and then T-H-E-A. And everybody would just assume it's the athletic at this point, right? Yeah. But I think that's because we're in sports world. And if we were in politics world, we'd be saying the same thing about the Atlantic. Because doesn't everybody also work at the Atlantic? Everybody sort of files through there at some point in their careers, for sure. It seems to be, I have never worked there.

So I don't have any idea with the inner workings of that place you're like. But it does seem like a very, it seems like a good place if you're, if you're, you know, committed to blogging or to, you know, highbrow writing. And they seem to find a way to make it worth a lot of people's while. Here are the differences I came up with. Mark Twain never wrote for the athletic. Number one. Yet. Atlantic, more like Atlantic home for think piece.

Athletic home for notes column. Game story. Beat writing. Right? And then the final thing is that Tana Hazie Coates writes for neither the athletic nor the Atlanta. I believe that to be true. I haven't checked the Athletics Masked Head today, so you never really know.

But I am going to, regardless of whether or not Jamel Hill is writing there, I am going to be subscribing to the athletic Calaveras County at the end of this podcast. You can't confuse this podcast for anything. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. The Press Box is the media podcast where you're not allowed to impersonate Brett Kavanaugh. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer. I just blew up the first segment, didn't I, David? A big show today.

We will first pick up some media notes from those Ford Kavanaugh hearings last week. Can the fate of our republic really be in the hands of a guy named Flake? Second, we'll talk about last year's quote unquote death of the NFL. And this year's quote unquote rebirth of the NFL. And finally, we're going to discuss the return of Michael Moore and how a liberal muckraker can find his way. in the era of Choppo Trap House. Plus, as always, that overworked Twitter joke of the week.

But, David, let's start where we ended our emergency podcast last week and pick up a few additional media tidbits from the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. On Friday, after we recorded our pod, Jeff Flake, Senator from Arizona, Republican, initially, after initially saying that morning he would vote for Kavanaugh, he comes back and says, no, I want the end.

FBI to take a week to do more investigation and turn up whatever they can. They can only have a week. They can only look at certain topics. But I am going to stand here and say that this is, I'm going to stand here and call a halt to this. The first thing I thought of was Christopher Buckley, everybody's favorite political satirist, right? When he wrote, thank you for smoking. Remember that book? And then later movie? Later, it was revealed that one of the tobacco companies had a lawyer named Coffin and Chris Buckley said, man, I wouldn't even go that far. I'm a satirist. I wouldn't go even for that. Would a satirist go so far as to say that the entire confirmation of a Supreme Court justice is in the hands of a senator named Flake?

Well, that's pretty appropriate, I guess. The whole thing is really bizarre. But, you know, you got to feel a little bit reassured by it, right? I mean, the, you do? I mean, a little bit. By the pause? By the pause, yeah. I mean, and by whatever calculus got Jeff Flake to this point. You know, I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about the, you know, the system's broken and, or people talk about this all the time. People are saying, as Trump would say, the system is broken.

A lot of people are talking about this. But it's, you know, this probably isn't the ideal way for the process to function. But at least it's, you know, I mean. mean, right up until that moment, it felt like a real, like, I mean, I should hope whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, although I know it's not true. I mean, it felt like a kind of rather sad day in, uh, in, in, in Supreme Court history that you would have those, you would have the Senate, the hearings that we, you know, heard on Thursday and then just have Kavanaugh steamrolled, you know, into the, into his chair. Um, so, you know, more, this, it was a really bizarre turn of

events and and you know they've managed the I mean the most incredible thing about it I guess has to be that they've managed to find a way to sort of one up the cinematic nature of the of the Kavanaugh forward hearings with this with this Jeff Flake about face is it speaking of face am I am I being totally shallow here by noting that every picture I see of Jeff Kavanaugh he looks like the night of woeful countenance he has the weight of the world bearing down on him he's like grimacing like Kavanaugh? Kavanaugh or Flake. Oh, excuse me, Flake.

Yeah, well, both of them at this point. Yeah, yeah. But it's more of a snarl on Kavanaugh's face, I think. But Flake looks like he's just, I mean, he just looks, I don't know, this is, this is way he looks, but he just looks torn apart by having to make this decision. Yeah, I mean, I think there's some of that with all of them. I mean, obviously, we talked some about Lindsey Graham last week, but there's an element to which he's, I'm sure he's, I mean, he's obviously just like trying this outfit on for

size, and he's not, you know, always convinced of his own, of his own, at least his own volume level, if not his own rhetoric. And there's, and honestly, this is a sidebar, but the, like, Kavanaugh, as, as an art director, I was, I was enthralled by the way, by, by seeing how, what photos of Kavanaugh, all the different outlets chose for their, well, you know, their, their post-hearing, they're post-hearing photos. Because, you know, I was looking through him myself. it's funny because there's some, you know, you look at it, you have every different facial expression right there at your, at your fingertips. And, you know, the question is, do you pick the one that most

encapsulates the, you know, the feeling or the vibe that you came away with? Or the one that most encapsulates what you thought his intention was or what the, or the path forward? You know, there's a lot, and there was a lot there painted on his face. Everything from the screaming pictures to the tongue-in-cheek pictures to the sort of plaintiff crying pictures. there were a lot of options and I was and I and honestly it's it's a tough call it's it's a difficult job it's I mean it's a great job but it's it's difficult job there's definitely some like you know athletes that we have in pictures a lot on the ringer dot com where I've sort of like made rules that we can't use overly expressive versions of them because I feel like it's

sort of inherently demeaning uh you know or or unnecessarily comical um when when that's not if that's not the point of the piece and I feel like I had that thought looking at everybody's pictures of Kavanaugh where it's like it's it's it's really hard to feel like you're not editorializing by just choosing a wire photo all that set aside you're right about you're right about flake you're right about because I mean all the pictures of him he's just sort of slouched in his seat and it's you know this is a that seat is a it's a it's a it's a it's a plumb job for you know a senator in his position all of them sure worked very hard and you know scrambled for those for those positions and you know now they're in I think for a lot you know if you're if you're on the

if you're on the democrat side then then you know it's it's a nice platform right now even if you're relatively powerless and maybe that's why it's more of a plum position but um I don't think anybody on the Republican side was terribly happy to be there flake just looked like you know he was just more beaten down than the rest and you saw that fabulous photo right of him sitting there between Lindsey Graham, I don't believe was Tom Tillis from North Carolina that was framed like a painting with the senators working on it and the staff. Absolutely. It's like a caravaggio, yeah, for sure. David Buto is the name of the photographer and wrote a piece for time about him about taking that photo.

But what a fabulous, amazing image of this. Another standout this week, we've seen both sides use the media, right, to try to influence his decision or to try to bring forth information that we'll influence others about this decision. We've seen, you know, one of the victims, one of the alleged victims go to the New Yorker, for instance, Dr. Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer about her experience with Kavanaugh. We also saw, speaking of Jeff Flake, two women, Anna Maria Archela and Maria Gallagher confronted him in the elevator on Friday. Now, this was after he had already announced that he was going to support Kavanaugh. They stood in, one of them blocked the door of the elevator. Flake wearing that expression that we mentioned a minute ago is sitting there listening to them.

This is what Gallagher told him. I was women that they don't matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them, you're going to ignore them. That's what happened to me, and that's what you're telling all women in America, that they don't matter. They should just keep it to themselves because if they have told the truth, you're just going to help that man to power anyway. that's what you're telling to all of these women. Boy, did that pull it out of the world of middle-aged white guys on the Republican side in the Judiciary Committee, didn't it? And bring it into a completely different kind of relief. Yeah, I mean, there was so much kind of emotional, I mean, just so much emotion, the second half of last week on Capitol Hill that it was hard, you know, for anything, any one moment to stand out.

but that one certainly did. And, you know, it's not, I mean, who knows, who knows what made, what helped Flake, led Flake to make this decision. But this certainly, you know, it's not often that you, you know, you feel like you can see a sort of like straight line between A and B. And this felt like one of those rare moments. Yeah, he admitted that this idea was in his head when he later made the decision. He gave an interview on 60 minutes. He wound up huddling with his friend Chris Coons from Delaware, who I think was all. also very influential, who's a Democrat.

In his decision, they wound up dramatically sort of going, leaving, Flake got up, tapped him on the shoulder. They walked out to this sort of ante room outside the judiciary committee room. They wound up huddling in a phone booth where they called Rod Rosenstein of the FBI. This is all according to a wonderful piece of New York Times and sort of the TikTok of all of it, asked Rosenstein if he could, in fact, complete an investigation of the FBI could within a week so that they could go back to the committee and essentially, offer this compromise, which they thought had broad support.

I was also, by the way, so Flake makes this decision. He delays this for a week. I was also amused at the media about face with Jeff Flake. Here's Jeffrey Tubin, New Yorker writer and CNN analyst on Jeff Flake Friday morning after Flake had announced that he would support Kavanaugh. He sort of said, oh, this is very sad. I mean, if there is a weaker, more pathetic political figure in the United States than Jeff Flake, I'm not aware of who it is.

And I thought yesterday was a classic demonstration of his inability to stand for anything. And here's Toobin, David, on Friday afternoon, after Flake's about face. Time for me to eat crow. I was wrong. Jeff Flake changed history. I mean, and it was him. It was him alone who did this. It wasn't Murkowski. It wasn't Collins.

And, you know, I was critical of him for big talk, little action. Brett Kavanaugh may yet may be confirmed but if it wasn't for what Flake did today he would be confirmed tomorrow. Oh waiter, one order of crow. Oh boy. Yeah, that's really, I mean,

it's funny because it's not a lot of people say things on those, you know, on political talk shows that are, you know, their takes. You know, they're inherently BS, you know, and it's not surprising that you see somebody have to eat their words 24 hours after saying, you know, one thing. But this was a case in which he was, you know, sort of correct both times. Well, and I was going to save this for the NFL discussion next, but we are incentivized if you talk about politics or sports on TV to do this, right? You go all in on this way, and then when the news changes, you go all in on that way.

And you get sort of credit for both takes. Are we sure that Jeff Flake changed history yet? Oh, no. I mean, if they come back and say, you know, we talked to Mark Judge, he denied everything, we don't have any new information. And Flake and, excuse me, Kavanaugh passes 51, 49 in the Senate. Did he really change history or did he just kind of, you know, put a Band-Aid over this for a week and then we're back to where we were? Well, we'll see what happens. I mean, certainly, you know, we can get to the end of the week and there can.

certainly be the feeling that that wasn't nearly enough time to find out everything we need to find out. But that said, you know, the FBI has an incredible, I mean, has basically endless resources for this investigation. If they're allowed to investigate, we'll get to that in a second. And, you know, without, I mean, for better or worse, this is sort of a, the one-week marker sort of put out a clarion call to anyone that was, if you're more comfortable going to a journalist or a confidon or a friend of you if there are other people with stories out there you know they have they it's sort of now now they are aware that this is their deadline um which is maybe an unfortunate sort of pressure to put on somebody but um you know it's it's not you you there's not

there's not the there shouldn't be the feeling of screaming into the void perhaps as there was you know one week ago so you know we'll see i mean i definitely think that flake i mean that flake is an interesting character, and I'm sure we'll be talking about him more in the months to come. But the one thing... Truly going to dominate the podcast for the fall. Yeah, exactly. But I know, but I think the Tuben's exactly right. I mean, in his first, and it's sort of the first statement is sort of take down that

you, that you, you know, kind of go, you get, you get so deep into the politics that you, that you, that you, are oblivious to the fact that you don't really stand for anything, you know, and there's, there's, it was just such an absence of conviction, an absence of just interest. And I think at some point, I mean, there was a moment where he, you know, clearly came to grips with that. Well, he's got the classic never-Trump or problem with the media,

which is that he is happy to be outspoken about Donald Trump and say everything he thinks. But he's a Republican and he's a conservative. And on the merits, on the political merits, anyway, he doesn't have a problem with Brett Kavanaugh at all. You know? So he's never going to be the. guy the media wants him to be.

He's just not that guy. He's not going to do an about face. He's not even going to go the full David from where you sort of sort of sound like a like a Democrat a lot of the time. He's just not that guy. So it's like, and I go back to what we've talked about before with John McCain. We're not in an era where, you know, sort of straddling the line and being a maverick, situational maverick does you any good with the media.

That's just, that's not that used, that was. the old media was aligned to lift those guys up, it's not anymore. And he is trying to maneuver in that space. And again, it's like he's going to make everyone on the right mat and he's going to make everyone on the left unsatisfied. And I'll just say, I mean, this is a very small thing, building off what you just said, is that, you know, I think that's sort of the problem that the sort of never Trumpers broadly defined have had since the get-go is that being against Trump doesn't really mean

you stand for anything. and, you know, perhaps there's a way forward that involves, you know, open-mindedness and a shred of humanity. But we'll go on. We all strive for open-mindedness and at least a shred of humanity every day. The other thing, David, I'm just remain morbidly fascinated by, is the talking point the Republicans have fastened on here with Blasey Ford's testimony, which is she was very credible. They are not trying to attack, and most of them, here I'm talking about at least members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, most of them are not trying to attack and discredit her specific testimony head on. Here is, for example, what Donald Trump had to say a day after the hearings. I thought her testimony was very compelling, and she looks like a very fine woman to me.

Very fine woman. And I thought that her testimony. likewise was really something that I haven't seen before. It was incredible. It was an incredible moment, I think, in the history of our country. But certainly she was a very credible witness. She was very good in many respects. And I think that I don't know if this is going to continue one word or are we going to get a vote.

But again, I'm here. He was the only one saying this. Asked on 60 Minutes if he believed Ford. Jeff Flake said, how could you not? John Kennedy, another Republican senator from Louisiana, who's also on the Judiciary Committee, said, I believe she is sincere. So what they're saying is she is sincere. She is believable. She is credible.

But however you thread this needle where you say all that stuff, but then say, well, he didn't do it. Because it's obviously if she is believable, sincere and credible. and she is telling the truth. Brett Kavanaugh is not going to be on the Supreme Court, right? I think just we have about 100% agreement on that. But they're saying she is all of these things, and yet he should be on the Supreme Court because there's enough uncertainty about it, perhaps, or because, you know, oh, well, it's just his word against her word, then we just got to throw up our hands and put him on

the Supreme Court. That is, that is the rhetorical tack here. What do you make of that? Well, I mean, it's not just a tactic. I mean, it's a, this is a, you know, quadruple backflip. If you, if you consider it one coherent tactic, there's a lot going on. I mean, it was clearly the decision was made to, to show as much respect as possible to Dr. Ford and her testimony to say, you know,

whatever, I mean, Jeff Flake was obviously on the extreme end of saying, I mean, of implicitly saying that he believed her. But, you know, everybody just sort of as a preamble to their, I mean, all the Republicans is a preamble to their insistence that Kavanaugh be confirmed, said that, that, you know, they believe, that they believe something happened to her and they, you know, were very impressed by her and, you know, if you're Donald Trump, she's a fine, fine woman or whatever. I mean, there was a, there was a lot of respect given to her, but it was such a dismissive kind of, you know, the sort of respect that you would say something really nice and then subsequently say the thing that is the opposite of whatever you should have gleaned from that,

you know, from, from her testimony. So, you know, I mean, I think that, I think that there's, we've, like, we've discussed this before, I think they just have a lot for, I don't, I don't even know if it's right or wrong. I mean, they just have a lot tied up in this sort of this concept of winning or this concept of momentum with Kavanaugh. And again, I said this last week. I mean, if you take that, take his point of view. I mean, if, if, if you, if you believe him to be innocent of these charges, I guess it's not as simple as just

dropping him in favor of another Supreme Court nominee because this one got politically difficult that you'd want to stick with him. But, you know, the whole thing just seems so fraught at this point. Fraught is definitely right. All right, David, let's take a break and 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. From the hearings of maybe future Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh,

Mitch McConnell declared, we have hired a female assistant to go on staff and to ask questions in a respectful and professional way. We want this hearing to be handled very professionally and not a political sideshow. So we have hired a female assistant to go on staff, David. It was an overworked Twitter joke to say, you'd think the Republicans would have binders full of female assistance.

Going back to, of course, the Mitt Romney classic binders full of women. Thanks to Matthew Benson for that one. That was all over Twitter. David, did you see the dramatic return of sports by Brooks, the long-lost internet sports person? It is. Quite a moment on sports Twitter last week. Yeah, last Wednesday.

his first tweet in five years. He posted a clip of Willie Wonka hobbling out of the chocolate factory. That was good. That was on message. So that's the story. A guy who vanished comes back five years later, right? It was an overworked Twitter joke to say this is the greatest advertising ploy imaginable for the new NBC series manifest. That's great.

Kind of good, right? Pretty good. Because it really is five years later they show up. Our pal Kevin Clark was in on that one. And finally, as we were set up. settling in for an NFL Sunday yesterday, the Atlanta Falcons official account tweeted a picture of Matt Ryan walking into the stadium. And, of course, this is right before the Falcons lost at the Bengals by a point. Take a look at this picture and tell me what you think it looks like.

This looks like, geez, I did not see any of these tweets. This looks like a stock photo of someone like going to college. Remember when Tiger Woods arrived at the PGA Championship in August with his hat backwards and the shades on look like a total badass? Oh, yeah. Matt Ryan looks like his director of communications. It was just the opposite. Everybody had fun at this.

Let me give you a few, Minakimes, says, walking into a banana republic with a time sensitive 40% off coupon. Bill Barnwell says, trunk of his car is full of paper towels because they were on sale. Eventually, we reached a kind of. of consensus. Doug Farrar, football writer who has a new book out, says the fields when there was a sale on

quinoa at Whole Foods. And Spencer Hall, the college football writer extraordinaire, says, Matt Ryan is confidently strolling into a Trader Joe's looking for green tea, mokey bites, and cookie butter. So if you had Matt Ryan striding into an upper middle brow grocery chain, congrats,

you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Very good. Very good. All right, David. Topic number two. I get press releases from the network. as part of my job as a sports media historian, as you called me last week. And let me tell you, this NFL season, they've been very rosy. There's one from my inbox from CBS today. It says CBS Sports's week four NFL double-hitter coverage of the NFL on CBS,

scored an increase of 14 percent ratings. The ratings are up 4 percent for the whole season through four weeks. The NFL and CBS, the season-to-date rating, excuse me, are up 4 percent from a year ago. this follows on lots of other ratings, good news, or at least not bad news. Richard Deich in his media column this week notes that Fox's new Thursday night broadcast had 14.5 million viewers this week. It was up 5% from the 10-game average of Thursday night football last year. And that was on a night Thursday night last week where we had just gotten off the aforementioned Ford Kavanaugh hearings. And cable news coverage that night of the hearings was up 75%.

So you got a huge chunk of the nation locked on cable news and still Thursday night. Now, I don't really care about ratings. But I do want to raise these things in the context of. Remember last year when the NFL was dying? Remember when we convened like an emergency meeting at the ringer? Pretty sure Kevin Clark was wearing like an undertaker's outfit. And Deshawn Watson had just gotten hurt and everything was dead, right? Trump was tweeting.

You know, Jerry Jones was saying things. All this stuff, just, it was completely, everything was at a downturn. And now, through four weeks, everything seems really quiet. And the whole sort of NFL is, his dead narrative, has taken a backseat. What do you make of that so far this season? I mean, I think the NFL dead narrative was always sort of, you know, bunk or at least over, overhyped. And I think a lot of these things. not a word we use enough in our regular speech. Thank you.

So I just go with bunkum? Should I go the full two syllables? I think that, you know, a lot of this is stuff that we can't, you know, you obviously can't wood it down to one reason. I mean, I know from personal experience, I've had a lot more fun watching the NFL this season. I don't think it has anything to do with kneeling or not kneeling, although that became a certain kind of like grown-worthy part of every week last year. Is it to do with Trump or not Trump? I don't know if it has that much to do with Trump. I mean, I think on Sundays, I don't, I'm not generally checking Trump's Twitter feed until, you know, I mean, until I probably home from the football, you know, watching football.

But there's been, you know, I think that there, there've been a lot of exciting games. There's a lot of good storylines, a lot of good young players, you know, that have been fun to watch. But certainly, I think that, that the fact that Trump is not overly invested in the goings on in the NFL is probably a net positive for the sport. Yeah. I mean, it seemed that whatever their problem was last year, was it just, I mean, now glancing at it from some distance, we can talk about the activism seems like a separate category to me. The Trump problem just seems like a, what is that, a governmental relations problem?

Is it a PR problem rather than some deep existential problem with a sport? And do we, by the way, do we also think that Donald Trump thinks the NFL's good now? or do we think that Donald Trump just forgot and it's going to be back in like week six? I think he forgot. I think that the panthers signing Eric Reed was just sort of, if not, actually the sort of period at the end of this story

than the sort of metaphorical one. I guess it wouldn't mean anything else but a metaphorical one. But all that said, you know, when he was signed, there was a little bit of, there was a little bit of like, oh my gosh, I can't believe the panther signed him because he was sort of, you know,

you know, 1B to Kaepernix 1A and the whole kneeling controversy. And, you know, that kind of coupled with the really bizarre market for veteran safeties this summer, but I guess that's more of an inside football part of the conversation.

But when they finally signed him, it was just sort of like, yeah, he's a really good player. We're excited to have him on the team. And it seemed like that whole portion of, you know, NFL sociopolitical history was a little, was kind of put to bed. And I think that everybody was a little bit happy just to exhale.

Yeah. And my sort of jaundice media take would be if you just sign the guys like Capardake and Eric Reed and say we're not scared of political tweets about this. We're not scared about some small portion of our fan base that's allegedly going to check out. It'll just be fine. It'll just be fine. And it's only when they are effectively blackballed, as I believe both of those guys were. Sure. And that you turn this from some, you know, short-lived burst of activism and a conversation about police brutality into this kind of just like nightmare that they put themselves into last year.

And it just like you said, it's the Panthers. And it's like, oh, well, he's going to play for us because we wanted to play for us and we think he's good. That's great. Yeah. I said come out of these things always thinking journalists love to declare the death of something. that is that is it's your favorite thing in the world it doesn't have to be sports it can be you know a kind of like late night comedy it can be saturday live by the way aren't we in about to have another cycle of is saturday night live dead or a k a saturday night dead because you have

after their after their week one uh cavana thing you can just feel that coming people are like it's time it's you know what saturday night live it's been great it's you know it's been so huge it's just time to cancel the show i can feel that coming uh And then in two years when they've discovered the next Will Ferrell and Phil Hartman, everybody else, everybody will say it back. Journalists love declaring the death of something. And their second favorite thing to do is to declare the rebirth of something. Because you get to enjoy both storylines. And neither one has to be right.

You just declare it and you sort of make it right. I was reminded, did you see that thing with Tiger Woods was watching after he finally went a golf tournament at the other day? He was watching those people give takes about how Tiger's never going to win a golf tournament again. They showed him like a drink. That was great. And I wanted to say, like, tigers should be watching that and absolutely enjoying, you know, the moment and watching all these cheap takes. But I was also saying those people are probably right now celebrating Tigers come back on television. Because that's what the incentives are to do.

The incentive is to go all in and declare him dead and the NFL dead and come back and say they're back. That is how the media works. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the NFL, the death and the return, I mean, however you want to draw that narrative up from this sort of meta standpoint, I don't think anybody was content with it continuing on the way it was last year. I mean, even the real naysayers of the league, the Clay Travis's and that elk were, you know, if the NFL actually dies, then that, then they lose, they lose two, right? I mean, it's only being the, it's only being the, it's only, it's only, it's only, being the, you know, ringing the bell for the death of the NFL, it's only effective if everybody else is, I mean, if the perception is that it's alive, right, or that it's so really powerful. And so, you know, I think that it's, I mean, I think you're right. Everyone was excited to talk about the end of something. And now they're so excited to talk about the return

of something. And I think probably at the end of the day, we're just talking about minor, you know, deviations along the margins with the noted, you know, significant deviation of a president who's tweeting about the subject. Yeah, and I also think things like young quarterback suddenly playing really well. Yeah, there's a lot to watch. Like Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield was listening to The BS Report when I was, BS podcast, excuse me, when I was driving in today. And we're talking about like how awesome the Browns are.

And I agree. But last year the Browns were kind of like a symptom of the NFL has just gone into a ditch. And now the same Browns because they drafted Baker Mayfield or a symptom of the NFL's back. It can be the same thing. Yeah, man, I was out watching, I was out watching, football yesterday in the wild at one of, one of, um, Cobble Hill Clinton, uh, Carol Gardens Cobble Hill's two NFL Sunday ticket containing sports bars. By the way, do you know how much it costs for a boy? If, if, if you need to know, I would, this is how lousy the bar I was at was,

was I spent some amount of time Googling how much it costs to have Sunday ticket for a bar because I couldn't imagine that like all the other bars were just letting them get away with being the only one we know around. Hit me. The only thing I could find, the thing that comes up for us on Google is a New York Post article from 2015 that says, depending on the size, it's $2,300 to $120,000 a year for a bar to have Sunday ticket. We seem like the Buffalo Wild Wings is in the 120,000 category. Yeah, like the ESPN zone type places. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I will, well, I don't wonder if ESPN actually has to pay for their own, is that's part of the deal they signed too. It's not 89-99 or whatever. That's what you're saying.

No, no, no. They pay massive amounts of money. But anyway, I was just there captivated by so many games at the same time, especially even going into the fourth quarter when normally, you know, half the games are or more than half the games are done, functionally done. It was just, there was just so much fun stuff to watch. And it continued straight through. I mean, last week we got a Monday night game and a Thursday night game that were good and interesting going in, you know?

And I don't know, I just, I feel like everything just feels weird. Like there's a lot of good players, a lot of good storylines. everything feels kind of interesting right now although that might all change in you know three weeks we'll see this isn't kicked in that many states but is there a chance that gambling makes all this feel more fun than perhaps it did last year

even if the product isn't all that different it's a really good question it hasn't affected the way I watch it for one and I don't know if there's anybody else that it's okay we know your we know your fiance's listening to this it's a wink wink yeah exactly yeah I have absolutely no money running on any of those games But no, I think it's, I think that I'm sure that has some effect.

But honestly, most of, I mean, we both mentioned the young quarterbacks. I mean, most of what I'm hearing from even the most like, you know, diehard, inveterate gambling friends is just like general excitement for the season. I don't know if it's easy to put that into context or into words. I know, but that's what's so funny to me about these things. They just seem to be like everybody you know is excited about the NFL. And last year, everybody you knew seemed to be convinced the NFL was suffering some existential crisis. And when I say everybody, I think these days that's probably like our corner of sports Twitter, that's probably what that actually means. But it never ceases to amaze me how everyone can shift like that.

And I think if we went to Roger Goodell and gave him some truth serum and said, what has changed about the NFL, you know, actually changed about the NFL? other than the absence of Trump tweets. I'm not sure there's really an answer for that. I don't think there's any answer at all. One thing that's demonstrably true is there is, you know, how many times has Trump tweeted about this once? I mean, tweet about the football all season, once or twice? He tweeted definitely about the, yeah, about the.

We've seen, and there's been, and there's been little or, no that I, as far as I've seen, no on-screen kneeling or on-screen Roger Goodell. So that eliminates, you know, the vast majority of any of that conversation for better or worse. He tweeted about ESPN, too. I forgot about that when ESPN said they weren't going to be showing the national anthem and continuing the policy. And he made that to a thing. All right.

You want to talk a little bit about Michael Moore? Yes. Michael Moore. It just, it feels like it feels like we're entering the time machine, doesn't it? It does. Going back to a to a simpler time and liberal muckraking back when Craig Kilbourne was a host of the Daily Show instead of John Stewart. There was no, if you wanted to, if you wanted to read an ass-kicking liberal track. you picked up your local newspaper and looked for a syndicated Molly Ivan's column.

That guy's back, David. He had a movie, he has a movie, Fahrenheit 9, 119, which bombed at the box office, made $3.1 million when it opened a week ago, despite opening in 1700 theaters. How do we think Michael Moore plays now? I mean, he was that, like, I just feel like he was that when we, there's a lot of figures in our life that sort of vaguely conform to the, to the Moore plays. playbook now, run the more playbook? He was that guy for a period of time. How does he, how does he play right now? Well, I mean, it's a really interesting question.

You know, despite the fact that he's, you know, that he still produces documentaries at a fairly regular clip. I mean, everything since, you know, bowling for Columbine Fahrenheit 9-11 has been, I mean, I've seen him, I've, I feel like I've seen him more on, you know, MSNBC shows or or showing up in an activist capacity than experiencing him as a narrative documentarian and you know that says something because he's such a part of all the movies that he makes.

I don't know how he plays now. I mean, I feel like he's sort of outgrown the role that he, I mean, the documentarian role that he built for himself because he sort of created a template that other people have glommed onto and sort of exceeded. And not just that people are making better documentaries than him, although that is certainly true, I'm sure, by some... I think they always were.

By some metric. No, they always were, but he also sort of set the template for a lot of television series in the documentary style for a lot of, you know, some of the sort of lower wattage documentaries that are clogging up everyone's queue on Netflix and Hulu and everything else. Just, you know, it's like one guy in a camera and this is, you know, and you can change history. He also really,

you mentioned Chappo Trap House in the introduction, there is some of that. I mean, politically, there's definitely a line there. The reference I kept thinking when watching his new documentary was Rachel Maddow because what I kept thinking was Rachel Maddow would have stuck the landing. But she has a very similar style

of like, let me start telling you a story. And then we're going to weave this into this grand narrative about the president's about the election about something. And then at the very end, you're going to be, right as you're asking yourself, why were we talking about

the water in Flint again? And she'll explain why. And there's this great aha moment. And at her best, that's what Rachel Maddo can do. And in a really positive, in a really great way. And in this movie,

you kept, I kept saying, I'm very, like, I feel very comfortable with his storytelling. It's sort of like a, like a favorite relative

telling you a tale or something. It's a yarn, but it's, but I, you know, he, I mean, far be it from me to be a film critic, but he almost stuck the landing, and then it didn't quite come together. The Fahrenheit 11-9 has like nine subjects.

It starts with Trump. We eventually get to Flint and the water supply in Flint. We also go to the Parkland shootings. We go a little bit to this sort of like 2018 citizen activism and new people running for office. office. There's all this kind of, you know, there's a little bit of kind of, you know, a few brushback pitches about the New York Times, some about the Clintons and Obama in there. But yeah, I found it stylistically to be really, to be sort of lazy in that sense. Like none of it, well, none of it was, all of it was like vaguely compelling, but you're right.

It didn't, it did not have a neat bow on it like a mad I would put on it. I also thought it was just kind of more important than good. Like it felt like this rousing call to arms. But, you know, other than the stuff about Flint, which I thought, which really maybe should have just been his movie. That should have been the movie. Yeah, right? Like that to me is like, you know, and he was there. He worked, you know, he did some protests, which was shown in the movie about that.

But I thought the movie should have either been Trump or Flint. Either how Trump co-opted liberal talking points to win the Midwest. Because this is Michael Moore territory. Michael Moore is one of the guys who got a lot of credit for. predicting this was going to happen in Michigan, which very few people saw coming, or just to Flint. Yeah.

I thought that was basically it. And if he could have done two, he should have done too. And the power, at least to the broader public, the power of the Trump documentary, imagine the power of a Trump documentary would have had if he had just,

you know, six months prior done a movie about Flint were the implicit villains or the explicit villains were, you know, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Yeah. I mean, I just think that would have been a fascinating film. And it seemed, I mean, it did seem like that his, that his, you know, broadsides against those, you know, sort of democratic, you know, power brokers were warranted. But also a little bit, they seemed, again, like he was sort of like, you know, I know he's sort of an equal opportunity gadfly, but it, but they, it felt like there was a little bit of, you know, there was a little bit of definition lacking.

there and the the you know what in some sense were the really touching i mean incredibly touching scenes of um you know women being motivated to run for office in the in the uh aftermath of the past four years um and and just generally like the the sort of like you know uplifting scenes of the sort of liberal movement that's to come we're sort of equal parts um you know moving and you know, it's a little bit like the scene in Michael Bay's Armageddon where everyone's leaning out the window waving their flags, you know? I mean, it's like it, like, you felt, you felt yourself moved, but you were like very aware that you were deliberate, that, you know, that you were being tricked in a certain way.

But yeah, I mean, I think all in all, it was, there was a lot of good stuff. It, it, I think to me it felt like, like, like, this was, like, if Michael Moore got a TV show and they released the first three episodes as a pseudo movie to, like, stoke it, this is what it would feel like, you know? But it didn't feel like one concise argument. That said, I agree. There was a lot of very important stuff in there. And, and, you know.

When I hear, when people say important, that's when I go, uh-oh. What happened if we're calling it important? So another couple of observations from me. One is, should he be working in movies that go into theaters anymore? Or is that just become this kind of lumbering battleship of a vehicle? And really, he should just be making down and dirty, quick documentaries for HBO or something like that. I mean, I think there's probably, you know,

the era like two months after, you know, he shoots them. Yeah. I mean, our boss, Sean Fennessey wrote about this movie, and we should mention that. It's a very, very good piece. Because I know Sean went in kind of wondering if the world needed Michael Moore still and came out a little bit reassured. And in a way that I did too,

although, you know, it sounds like we're being probably a little bit hard on the movie. But, um, but yeah, I think there's probably some, uh, economic interest in, in, uh, doing movies the way that he does that, that Sean would be better than us to explain. Certainly, like, releasing them into theaters and getting that press bump and then, like, the inevitable Oscar nomination later on, getting a sort of secondary role as it's popping up on streaming services is probably a good plan. But it does feel, he does feel more like a small screen documentarian.

And also, and you're right, more of a down and dirty, like a creator with much more urgency in the timeline. Yeah, and this movie, I mean, to me, the movie, felt slow. All the stuff, Russian stuff at the beginning and Trump's election. Like, that's funny.

But that just feels like we've explored that so many different ways by now. And the theatrical film is not necessarily. The other thing is just amazing to me about him is how he has been

through no fault of his own outflanked by John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Choppot, as I mentioned. We could be Maddie Clayson's way. Just name lefty liberal guy out in the universe, right? Yeah.

It was hard to find that. And also the other thing I'd note back in the 90s and early aughts. And the other thing I'd note about Michael Moore is that he was considered to be kind of the dangerous lefty guy in those. I went back at the look that I remembered David Edelstein, film critic at Slate reviewing Fahrenheit 9-11. This was in 2004. Edelstein writes, and Edelstein, no one will ever confuse with a conservative, writes he was partly disgusted by the film and wrote that it, quote, it describes only venal motives to the other side. We're talking about George W. Bush here.

There is no sign in the of in the of a filmmaker's openness to other interpretations or worldviews. You are with more or you are a war criminal. Now, how many lefties and liberals do you think would have a problem with that worldview now? Nobody, right? No. That are on to. What's that you're, you know, well, he's, he's calling a lot of these guys on the right war criminals. You know, he's, he's describing only bad motives to them.

Like that, that's, that's a lot of the discourse now. So I think in a way He's just sort of been outflanked Yeah He seems like What I'm watching this movie What was what shown out to be about Michael Moore was Not the sort of high

He used to be like You know working in this style of high irony He has since been outpaced on that And it was the Midwest populism Kind of genuine Midwest populism Of him That made him different than some of the Other go-toes we have today

Yeah I mean there was a time in his heyday. I mean, you and I have talked about this a million times you know, off the, without microphones around, but like the scene where he shows up with the glass of Flint water

at the governor's office. I like that. But that's vintage Michael Moore, right? That's the pranks. There weren't a lot of, there's not a lot of pranks in this movie. Right. There was a time where that was for all the youngsters listening to this podcast. That was like an entire, that would have

been an entire, like the The emotional, the emotion of like an entire season of a Sasha Baron Cohen show in one Michael more gag like that, you know, I mean, like, the earth stopped when he would do stuff like that. Because it just seems so incredible that someone would put this on film and get attention for it and, you know, and still be alive to tell the tale. And I think, you know, part of what he's run into, I think, is, I mean, he's a brilliant guy and certainly, you know, I mean, a lot of the stuff that, like you were talking about with, you know, the war criminal stuff from, from the old Fahrenheit is similar.

I mean, it relates to his, his prediction that Trump was going to win. It's, he has the, he has a little bit of a sage, you know, quality or he can,

he can predict the future and have the guts to say something, to use the phrase war criminal before. I mean, that's a real, more than anything else, it was a question of terminology, right? And he had the balls to use those words before it was in vogue. And that's, that's what I want from him now.

He is, he's the, he's the sage of the Midwest. That's, right, for his next. that's the guy I want to hear because you know what you know who you know who will can tell us how Elizabeth Warren Kamala Harris Cory Booker can win Michigan can recapture Michigan in 2028 it's Michael

Moore it's not chopo it's not Matt Iglesias I think you're exactly right but that dude knows yeah and I think that with everyone else that you that you've compared him to I mean there's a lot of it's true and anyone else that anyone who's listening to this is thinking of it's it's sort of the problem that a lot of people who were writers of his of his generation had when they when the internet sort of took over is that suddenly there's a million people who are who are younger than you and so much more expert at you than at everything that you're doing, right? That you're not, you don't have, you don't have, you know, this claim stakes to being the one person who does a thing anymore. And, um, you know, Michael Moore is not a,

not an artiste when it comes to style or technique. You know, he's not, he's, he's, he's, he's a thoughtful person. He's a thinker and he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a creative storyteller. but anyone that, you know, it's hard to imagine him pulling off something as precise as a, you know, John Oliver monologue. No. You know, and not just in performance, in thought. You know? That's what I thought too when I watch this is, is how fact-driven so much of this stuff is today. Michael Moore is not fact-driven in that same way.

No, and he's fact-driven, but he's mostly emotion-driven, I think. Right. And so you're absolutely right. You, when putting this, when you find yourself in this position, you know, you find what you can that no one else is doing, that no one else can do as well as you. And I think that having him be the, you know, the sage of the Midwest is the way to go. Should we do some follow-ups from last week's podcast? Please.

We talked about whether the podcast bubble was finally bursting last week. Remember that? I do. It seems so long ago now. Since we did that segment, Mina Kimes and Don Van Nata have both announced new podcasts on ESPN. The bubble is back. baby. We did it. Let's blow it back up. Got a great tweet from Dan Diamond, Politico, too, who shares some amazing news with us, David,

which is that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is starting a podcast. No. True story. Do you want to guess what the name of the Congressional Budget Office's podcast is? Is it CBO Radio? No. Do we guess again? That's pretty good. Radio-free CBO? No. Oh, gosh. Congressional budget. Think lofty. Think above the fray.

Think budget. I don't know. What is it? What is it? You got to tell me. You ready? In our estimation. Oh, my gosh. That's fantastic.

That's too much. Slow clap. In our estimation. I kind of thought, you know how it's like the mandatory adjective is the non- partisan congressional budget office. I thought you could either call it nonpartisan or mandatory adjective, which would be kind of the kind of hipper way to go about it. That's fantastic.

I'm glad to see that people are still making podcasts in this very difficult podcast world that we live in. And speaking of which, we're going to be making another one next week. We should thank our producer, Jim Cuttingham, our research guy, Chris Almeda. David, thank you for joining us on another edition of the press box. We'll be back next week. See you, buddy. See you later, man.

For all the youngsters listening to this podcast, That was like the scene in Michael Bay's Armageddon, where everyone's leaning out the window waving their flags. You know, I mean, it's like open-mindedness and a shred of humanity. We'll go on. We all strive for open-mindedness and at least a shred of humanity every day. A waiter, one order of crow. Oh, boy.