The Press Box - Mueller Over and the Tom Izzo Controversy | The Press Box

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

The delivery of Robert Mueller's much-anticipated report (03:00), the world reacts to Michigan State’s Tom Izzo yelling at a player during the NCAA tournament (32:15), and a “Notebook Dump” on tape recording interviews, journalist headshots, and more (43:30). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelly. As you approach the final season of Game of Thrones on April 14th, the ringer is providing you with a deep dive on the show's first seven seasons and what to expect from season. Up on the website, staff writers like Alison Herman, Alyssa Bresnak, Zach Kramm, and many more are analyzing what loose ends the show needs to address in the last season. Up on the video side, our resident Game of Thrones experts, Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion are breaking down the show's top 25 moments in the 25 days leading up to the festival. You can find each day's videos up on our social channels like Facebook and Twitter and the compilation videos on YouTube.com slash the ringer at the end of each week. And make sure to keep an eye off for even more Thrones coverage coming from us as we get closer to April 14th. David, last week NBC foreign correspondent Matt Bradley was shown in eastern Syria, spitting into his hands and using it for hair gel before a stand-up. What I want to know is, is this really the best possible clip in involving a foreign correspondent you've ever seen in your life.

Yes, absolutely. The confidence with which he did it, Richard Engel must be jealous watching that. I mean, just the sheer, just straightforwardness of this just hand-spit-in-to-hair technique. It was gross, but it was presumably very necessary, you know, reporting from around the world and crazy windstorms and sandstorms and whatever else.

I mean, this was one of the best things I've ever seen. One of the best uses of like Twitter video too. I mean, when I first saw it, I was like, what is this picture of Velshi going to lead to? And it was just an incredible, incredible surprise. If we hired some random genre novelist to write Scoop 2, like they take over the evil and wah mantle, just like all those people are writing modern day James Bond thrillers. Yeah. Would the opening scene, and now, of course, William Boot is no longer a newspaper foreign correspondent,

it, but he works for MSNBC, would the opening scene not be William Boots spitting into his hands and styling his hair? I mean, it just feels like it's for a parody novel. It's amazing. But even that, I mean, it would take a hell of a writer to do it justice, because to hear someone spit in his hands to fix his hair before the camera started rolling is nowhere near as terrifying, alarming, just like physically upsetting as it is to see that happen in real life right in front of your eyes. Journalism takes a bad rap in the world that we live in. That's the sort of moment that makes you think, you know,

these guys really have it hard. They work really hard for all of us to give us to send us this truth. And we should really appreciate it more for it. We are the Daily Beast and Daily Brute of Media Podcast. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. The Press Box is the media podcast where you're never allowed to take off Friday afternoons. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker. with three topics for your pleasure and amusement.

First, David, we have a lot to say about the delivery of the Mueller report. Total exoneration or something less than total exoneration. And what about the media who've been covering this for years? Do they get exonerated too? Second, Michigan coach Tom Izzo gets caught on camera yelling at a player during the NCAA tournament. What happens when we see how the college sports sausage is made? And finally, a big old notebook dump on subjects ranging from tape recording your interviews to presidential candidates who talk about James Joyce,

plus, of course, the overword Twitter joke of the week. But we got to start with Mueller, Mr. Shoemaker. Round 5ET on Friday afternoon, Robert Mueller delivered his report on the president in possible collusion with the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. First thought, David, on Friday afternoon,

when this thing dropped, have you ever been happier to work at a sports and entertainment website? Oh, man. listen, we've taken our fair share of a fire on the weekends and odd hours of the night. So I don't feel too bad for all the saps out there working in the political sphere. But this was certainly one where I was literally turning my computer off and I was just like, or closing my laptop, walking out the door and I was a little bit anxious, but I was like, there's really nothing for me to do here.

So that's fine, at least until Monday. Yeah, it wasn't like Woj tweeted something, you know. Yeah. I'm sure everybody would go to battle stations here. I also thought this is one of the few times where this was a Friday news dump in every precise sense of the word and not necessarily even in a derogatory way. This was actual real news and it was a whole, it was a gigantic dump of it. But I guess we didn't get to see all of the entire dump. So it's still, it's a, it's going to be a prolonged event, I think.

That afternoon, the NBC Politics Twitter account put out a shareable graphic that was just a big picture of Robert Mueller. and it said Mueller Report colon submitted. And you couldn't click through or anything. You're just a graphic, just a shareable graphic. And what was amazing to me is the week before, NFL teams were tweeting out the same exact shareable graphics for like free agents they signed. It's like Randall Cobb signed in all caps. So yet another moment where political writing and sports writing comes into an unholy tango. A couple of immediate media reactions.

This was one of those moments, rare moments, when just about everybody went to work on Friday afternoon. Pod Save America, co-host John Favro, our old colleague, tweeted, I know a lot of you have been asking for an emergency pod about the Mueller report, but we're going to try something crazy and wait until we know what's in the Mueller report. Presumably, we are still waiting to some extent. Yeah, sure. The Daily did do an emergency podcast over the New York Times, which was an account of reporter Michael Schmidt's day on Friday.

And I'm not kidding. He was miced up. And it had him like walking to work and trying to give a woman directions on the street in Washington, D.C. So we were, we were ready for that one. Rachel Maddow was on vacation trout fishing in Tennessee. Do not see Rachel Maddow as a trout fisherman somehow. Holy crap. When she hurried to a studio to do her MSNBC show.

And if you watch the clip, she's sitting in front of this very small and unencompassing. imposing skyline in doing her show. And I was like, what is that? It was Knoxville, Tennessee, is what it turned out to be. The rare Knoxville backdrop. What's funny about all this is the report had been submitted, but we didn't really know anything on Friday afternoon other than that it recommended no further indictments. And then we would know something sometime over the weekend, but we would only know Attorney General William Barr's summary of the report. Right. So it was this all, everyone at battle stations, here we go, news moment, but we didn't know anything.

That was weird, was it not? Yeah. I mean, there's some people they're going to take, I mean, they're going to probably take exception to the Pod Save America tactic because, you know, this is, we're talking about a group of people who had no difficulty talking about the report not knowing what was in it a day before and for months and months prior. But there is a response. I mean, it is it is the responsible way to go about it. We still don't know what's in the report. And we may, you know, I mean, I don't think, I don't think there's going to be some great, you know, cloud of obfuscation or I should hope not. But, you know,

there will be some period before we're fully aware of everything that was in there. And there's a wide variety of things that could be, you know, secreted a way under that report. as we speak, so I don't want to get into too many details. But yeah, I mean, it's, it is strange, but it's, but it's, this is, this is what we've been building to, right? I mean, there's been some, Justin Charity wrote for the ringer last week that there was, you know, that the Mueller report was about to come out. Before, before, before we knew what it's coming, you know, specifically coming, the Mueller report was about to come out, but it probably wouldn't mean anything for the Trump presidency. And I think that was the, that's kind of where we were all headed to. The media reaction, you know,

Mattow rushing to the camera. I mean, that's, you can, you can say that's, that's her responsibility after, after spending so much time on it and up to this point. It's just a weird space that we're in right now. I think John Koblin used the word vamping in his piece about what cable news was doing on Friday and vamping is really the correct word because you just, you just, there was this incredible thirst for content about the Mueller report, but absolutely, again, aside from the no indictments, but absolutely nothing to say.

So you just had to do something. thing. I love this CNN tweet from Friday. It was either Friday or Saturday. On the evening, Robert Mueller submitted his report to the Justice Department. President Trump was on a tiled patio of Mara Lago, bathed in golden light with his wife and son Baron who had reached teenagerhood two days earlier. This was the CNN tweet. Dwayne David Paul replies, CNN just completed a creative nonfiction writing seminar and desperately want someone to ask how it went. So that was one way to fill the time. Let's get to the early conclusions, David. Here I'm quoting from the New York Times. The investigation led by Robert Smoller III found that neither President Trump nor any of his

aides conspired or coordinated with the Russian government's 2016 election interference and dot dot drew no conclusions or but I should say drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice. Trump immediately called it a complete and total exoneration while a bunch of Democrats running for president said, show us the report rather than having us rely on your handpicked attorney general's summary of the report. And that really was an interesting thing that sort of bore out in the news today. I was sort of surprised to pick up my copy of the print New York Times on the driveway and find the huge headline, Mueller finds no Trump Russia conspiracy when we are still in fact relying on William Barr's summary of Mueller.

The Washington Post, and this is from a James Fallow's tweet, was the same. Mueller finds no conspiracy on page A1, which is pretty certain, again, for something none of these people have seen. The Seattle Times, Fallow's notes elsewhere in a thread,'s headline was bar colon, no collusion, no exoneration with a subheadline. Trump's claims of vindication while counsel's report stopped short of absolving presidents. Anyway, it was, again, one of these strange moments where, and I think Schmidt actually said this on the Daily Podcast, almost everything the Times had ready to go was kind of pre-written other than the top line conclusion because, you know, there really isn't anything to say. And now, you know, all the, all the pieces are sort of around what happens next, what do the Democrats do? How did the Democrats get their hands on the report? Will Trump in the White House and Barr, let them see the report, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. I think, yeah, I mean, it sort of gives you a moment to reflect, if I can get a little bit. Their newspapery of you, but go ahead. Yeah, no, it gives you a moment to reflect about how much of this entire media landscape that we're a part of is pre-written. You know, I mean, there's so much of what you consume on a daily basis. It's literally just rehashing the sort of bullet points as we know it. But, you know, the difference between Trump guilty of collusion and Trump not guilty of collusion. Well, I mean, anything short of him, like, literally being arrested in the White House is probably pretty minimal when it comes when you're when you're actually related, you know, talking about how it's going to be related related in the in the Washington Post or New York Times or on cable news. I mean, my guess is that MSNBC is still pushing a fairly partisan line about awaiting the actual report and seeing what's actually in there.

But yeah, I mean, so until we get more information and maybe beyond then, we have, most people are just kind of maintaining the status quo of where they were on Thursday, just with a little bit more, I think there's a lot of relief in some quarters and, you know, a lot of anxiety and others. I really like this point Dave Weigel made on Twitter Monday morning about the media's framing of the scandal. And what he said was he thought a lot of D.C. is thinking about rushing. gate in terms of Watergate, where something happens in this case, we could, you know, look at going way back to the firing of Comey, but something's going to happen. And then good faith politicians will finally get together and or the president will resign in shame. And he says the working template for scandals is not Watergate, but actually Iran Contra. And it's protect the president at all costs and then go to the base and say it's a witch hunt,

worked for Bill Clinton eventually too. And I think that's exactly right. And if you thought of Russia the whole time is that, that no matter what happens with the Mueller report, Trump and his allies in Congress are going to blink once and go to the base and say either exoneration or it's all bullshit like we've been saying all along or it's a partisan witch hunt. And they're going to hunker down and try to win the next election. That's what happened to Reagan slash George H.W. Bush. That's what happened with Bill Clinton. that is what we do and that is the normal business

of scandals in Washington and it appears like that's going to be what it is again Yeah I mean what would have been the far end of it I'm trying to even imagine what the what the I guess let me take a step back

there's been a lot of criticism of their justifiable criticism of Republicans in Congress for their just complete submission to the Trump White House in the face of their own morals and their own history

of political history. But there's always this sort of undercurrent of like that it's a really bad political move for them to be doing this because they're tethering themselves to a lead balloon of a presidency. I think there was probably a real calculation that the best way out of this, like you said, hunker down and think about the next election, was for everybody to stand together and for everybody to like, to proclaim abject denial about anything bad that could possibly have happened and, you know, conspiracy, cry conspiracy and everything else. And I think that, I mean, whether or not that was the plan, that's certainly what you see

playing out. I was trying to do a thought experiment over the weekend about what the Mueller report could have possibly said that would have resulted in just a black mark being put over the entire Republican Party. And all I could think of was like, if that, you remember, I don't think we ever did a segment on it. We talked about it. You remember when Jonathan and Chait wrote that like fan fiction for the new for new york magazine about what if Trump had been like had literally been made into a russian secret agent in 1987 or something taking a lot of flag for that today yes well i actually didn't realize that it'd come back up but i mean at the time it seemed ridiculous and there was a there was a point i know for myself

that there was a little bit of a uh you know turning of the page in my own outlook on the subject just because that rung true, I mean, for what I think a lot of people that I knew were thinking, even though I think Chate went about it, I think it was just a thought experiment for him. And I think there was a little bit of flag planting, though, on the other hand. And I, and yes. And anyway, I mean, the point I was trying to make was like if that had just been born out to be 100% true, I suppose that would have been the black mark over the entire Republican Party. But I'm not sure what's short of that would have really would have really felt that much

different today. I think that piece, by the way, last summer, Che was talking about him as a Russian asset rather than a Russian agent, which is an important distinction and something he was making at the time just to clear that out. But yes, when you say Black Mark, though, I wonder if Black Mark is operationally means anything. That's what I'm saying. I don't think that it does. I really don't think there's anything in the, that could have been in the report that

wouldn't have, you know, look, Nancy Pelosi's already said that she's probably, you know, that the Congress is almost certainly not going to impeach Trump or try to impeach Trump. So operationally, we're going to, you know, continue into weirdo, what's the truth land? And Trump's going to run for president again. And the Democrats are going to try to defeat him. And that is going to be as it ever was. I do think when you bring up the chate story and my mind does go to the number of people in the media calling, taking victory laps today.

Have you been reading the Glenn Greenwald Twitter explosion? I was talking to Justin Charity in the office here and I was just like, you should just write Glenn Greenwald, I mean, write a Glenn Greenwald as vindicated piece and a little bit tongue in cheek because Greenwald, he is a relatively honest

ideologue or thinker in a lot of rigid thinker in a lot of ways. He seems to be a little bit over the, I mean, I can't quite figure out his his bearings on on this subject. But I did check out his timeline.

That's such a nice way to put it, by the way. Yeah. Well, I don't want, I mean, I honestly don't understand his point of view enough to even crack about it too much. But I went to his timeline today

just to expect a sort of like, I mean, I don't know why, but I was expecting a kind of simple like one or two tweet valedictory, you know, and got just like, like starting on Friday

and not stop. I mean, this is like a, like a President Trump level tweet storm almost. It seemed like there, you know, he just was going nonstop and was just particularly like, like, awkwardly targeting Rachel Maddow. And I, and listen, I mean, I think that it's, I think that she's a hundred percent fair game. And if you wanted to paint her as the face of the anti, I mean, the Russia collusion conspiracy, as he called it, as Greenwald called it, I think that that's a,

argument you could make just because of her notoriety and her literal, you know, her time slot and her level of visibility. But, wow, it was uncomfortable to read the way he was going after. But in general, it did seem like before the Mueller report came out, he was part of a sort of contention that felt like they were, I don't know,

protesting a bit too much. And even afterwards, it seems like it's even more so I'm a little bit perplexed by the reaction there. Yeah. Well, I see a lot of what something that's a very nonpartisan trick, which is to attack the media. The media has made too much of a, too much of a stink about Russia.

Everyone, every one of us is undefeated when we attack the media. Because the media can't fight back in any way. And that accusation doesn't mean anything. The media did a terrible job covering Trump and Clinton in the 20th. 2016 election. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, okay. The media did a terrible job covering steroids in baseball in the late 1990s. Okay. I mean, there's just nothing. There's, there's nothing to that. It's such a meaningless critique. And like I said, nobody can fight back because you'd be like, oh, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about somebody else. Yeah. I mean, and he was also circulating a video that was, I'm not, I don't know if he created it. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't. believe that he did. But it's a two-minute, it's a two-minute clip of like news or new,

television news organizations from across the board, non-Fox division, um, saying this is the beginning of the end of the, or this is the last day, you know, the, yeah, the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency. Things to that effect, over and over again, back to back. Which we've made fun of, yes, on this, on this podcast. Yeah, and that's, that's exactly the point. It's like, yes, we know that this is ridiculous. We know it's over the top. We know it's silly, but also it's entirely out of context. So it's just, like if you're going to be knocking the news media in some really like overly broad,

generalistic way, it's probably not helpful just to be pulling all these like random quotes out of context. When someone really could just be saying I mean, listen, there's a lot of bad things that have happened in the Trump presidency that drew, I mean things that Trump like literal, like making fun of the recently

deceased John McCain, their people went on TV and said this is the beginning of the end. Like no one because no one could take the president seriously anymore. It has nothing to do with collusion. It'd be really easy to pull together a fake, you know, supercut of people acting hysterically about things that just Trump actually did, you know? Yeah.

There's no investigation necessary to suss out the truth there. And the term you used earlier, flag planting, I think, is a great, flag planting should be called out because it's just, it is silly. But that is actually a pretty separate issue from what we're talking about here. The, I saw somebody say this on Twitter, and I can't find it now, so forgive me anonymous Twitter person. But somebody said, what if, uh, the kind of thud that the Mueller report is causing right now is just a matter of timing. Because what if he had indicted all 34 people on Friday afternoon that he indicted in this kind of slow drip fashion over many months? What if all those indictments were handed down, including many, many, many people in the White House and close to the Trump campaign or close to Trump?

What if that had all happened? Wouldn't the White House, wouldn't we be saying, oh my gosh, this is a giant scandal and the White House is in chaos today, as opposed to saying, oh, well, Trump got away, Scott Free? I mean, we've, you know, because because all that stuff seems in the now very familiar point about how fast the Trump news cycle moves, all that stuff seems like, oh, it's in the past and it's not a big deal. All that stuff was a huge deal. And you could say all that stuff proves lots and lots of things. I mean, somebody, a lot of people pointing out today out too on Twitter that, you know, the bit about Paul Manafort sharing a poll with somebody with ties to Russian intelligence in the middle of the campaign is just kind of a thing now that is detached from all of this that is buried under total exoneration, quote unquote. But I just thought that was an interesting point. And it wouldn't surprise. I mean, I'm not trying to stoke any conspiratorial fires or anything, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if, you know, when that report is actually leaked or, or.

released, I would think leak is probably more likely at this point, that we see, you know, we see serious offenses, at least in terms of lies being told to the Mueller in team, which is a federal crime, you know, being committed by other people within the Trump orbit. And I think, and that Mueller sort of decided through some measure of, you know, responsibility that he wasn't going to overcharge, you know, lying to cover up non-crimes or whatever. Yeah, or here's a lot of stuff that I could thought we could get halfway to a conviction on, but not the whole way, which would still be, again, if published in the newspaper, incredibly damning. Yeah.

If not actionable. I did. Can we, by the way, when you talk about leaks, can we kind of look with amazement that the Mueller investigation was essentially league-free the whole time? It never, he and his associates never really leaked. there's been a lot of comparisons with Ken Starr, which just incredible, most incredible leak machines in Washington history. But, you know, it wasn't until, you know, again, we got some sort of minor heads up about when this thing might appear, which is probably a result, I assume, of him coordinating with the Justice Department

and saying, here, you know, this is coming so the whispers can get back to the press. But he never leaked. Yeah, if this were like the 70s or maybe even before that, the 50s, then Mueller would just be like in prime position to do. like a diapers commercial, you know, just like everybody knows that I don't... Hugues, yeah. And he looks like he's from the 50s or from the walk out there and just be like,

everybody knows that I'm the leak free. Yeah, that would be great. We built him up as this face of probity. Why can't he translate that into selling products? Guys got to make some money, man. After all this goes down. I did love this one victory lap tweet from WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks, remember them and the Russia business?

New York Times front page this morning is of little surprise to at WikiLeaks readers to which the Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Markey replies love getting Mueller report analysis from folks whom the report unequivocally implicates in a foreign intelligence operation. So the one victory lap

we won't accept no. It's from WikiLeaks. All right, David, it's time for 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. Are you surprised that there's going to be a giant Mueller report section of the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Oh, please. Bring it on. I'm excited. Before we get to it, though, I did love this tweet from Ashley Feinberg.

A good Twitter feature would be if it temporarily restricted your account if you tried to tweet a joke that had already been tweeted more than 20 times, which listener Kirk Beto notes is like the Overwork Twitter joke penalty box. You're not banned from Twitter, but just take a little time out. Yeah. Take a breath. Yeah. All right, champ.

Take a C for a few minutes. I like that. I like that idea. Let's send that to our anybody. we know at Twitter. McKay Coppins at the Atlantic sends this one in. I love one Superstar Political Reporter, send us stuff. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write.

Maybe the Mueller report was the friends we made along the way. Thanks also to Henry Thornton for that one. That was used dozens and dozens and dozens of times. I mean, sometimes when I look for these, it's like, I found three examples. This is like a hundred examples. So thanks for that. Another bit was to cast Mueller as a kid writing a term paper. So the tweet went something like this.

The Mueller Report. Page 1. Webster's Dictionary defines collusion as dot, dot, dot, dot. In conclusion, Russia is a land of contrast. Thanks to Kenan Mahoney for that one. Another bit is casting Mueller as a journalist who is right up against his deadline. Did you see some of these? Yeah, lots. The Attorney General will deliver his summary of the Mueller report to Congress this afternoon,

to which the New York Times is Dave Hitzkoff replies, me when I tell my editors I'm close to filing. And it's true. Bees should be ready this afternoon is a great one. Somebody tweet, I don't even know who it was, but somebody tweeted the journalist tick of like kind of sidling up to the tweet where they're just like, I wrote a thing and then like hands over eyes emoji, you know? Yeah, that was Bobby Bigwheel, at least in one of them. That sounds like Bobby Bigwheel. Another one.

It said, once the Mueller report arrives, William Barr intends to use a written statement, acknowledging he has received the report and will take a few days to review it. it, to which the New Yorker's Eric Lack replied, it sounds like Barr has some experience being a magazine editor. I got this piece. Look forward to reviewing it. So good stuff there. In other news, David, big story today on Michael Avenotti. Wow. Okay. Here we go. According to ABA journal, Avanotti has been arrested and charged with extortion and conspiracy for allegedly trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike in exchange for his silence on what he claimed to be to be damaging information. It was an overworked Twitter joke

to say, just sue it with the Nike News and Michael Avinati. Thanks to Chris Olson for that one. By the way, as long as we're doing media recriminations, the media's investment

in Russia Gate versus the media's investment in Michael Avanotti. Yeah. I mean, shouldn't that but we'll be what we're now retroactively ashamed of? Yeah, we joked about it at the time

that he was, that his availability, just sort of, his endless availability, he sort of put the lie, I don't know, put the lie, but exposed a lot of TV journalism for what it is. It is like if you're remotely noteworthy and you're willing to go on camera at any given second, then you can be on camera a whole, whole lot. He would go on cable news and say, let me preview something I'm going to say on a different news program tomorrow.

And it was just, it was bonkers there for a while. Can I, can I interrupt really quickly to say that I, while you were talking about, we were talking about Matt Iglesias in relationship to Glenn Greenwald. I was just perusing Iglesias' Twitter feed and realized that he made, he tweeted something that I, a joke that I made in Ringer Slack, which was as soon as the Avanotti stuff came out, he tweeted, rough day for Avanotti's presidential aspirations. So I guess I'm guilty of the overwork Twitter joke of the week, too, if I use Twitter. The overslegged Twitter joke, yeah. In other news, David, in 2014, conservative media person Ben Shapiro tweeted this, quote, right side of history may be. be the most idiotic phrase of modern times.

History is not God and has no morality. Okay, so that's Ben Shapiro in 2014 coming out against the phrase right side of history. It was an overword Twitter joke to point out that Ben Shapiro's new book is called the right side of history. I know, no joke. Subtitle how reason and moral purpose made the West great. I saw that via Brennan Carrot. That is amazing. And finally, David, the NCAA tournament is going on.

Big news in the world of college sports. Yeah. Everyone watching teams and players they had never heard of five minutes ago. One they might have heard of is Murray State's jaw Morant, who had a triple double in the first round of the tourney. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, just use jaw rules as your headline today and get it over with. After Morant squared off against Marquette, Kyle Musica says it was an overwork Twitter joke to say Marquette's defense for the entire. game was like this. Where is job?

Always good to recall a classic Dave Chappelle Jarl Bette. Oh man, that's great. But this is my favorite. This may be one of the all-timers. Did you see Gardner Webb a university, as you well know, David, in beautiful Boiling Springs, North Carolina.

They were very nearly the second number 16 seed to upset number one Virginia. Not the second 16 to ever win an NCAA tournament game, but the second to upset Virginia. they fell short alas but there was this whole cottage industry of names that

to name things that Gardner Webb sounds like are you ready for this list okay go ahead Gardner Webb sounds like a law firm on a CBS show your mom DVRs yes that's correct Gardner Webb sounds like legislation passed in the 90s that everyone agrees in hindsight was a bad idea

Gardner Web sounds like a wealthy yet crass character Roddy Dangerfield would have played in 1986 sounds like an actor who played in 1986 Sounds like an actor who played alongside John Wayne in his later years and dies one-third of the way into the movie. Gardner Webb sounds like a market research survey company who tries to charge you extra for some pie charts they've created from the data. That was good. Gardner Web sounds like the name of a kid whose parent would pay a large sum of money to be on a Division I lacrosse team.

Gardner Web sounds like the villain in an 80s ski comedy who is threatening to buy and shut down the fun but unprofitable local mountain. resort. That was great. Gardner Webb sounds like the sequel to Charlotte's Web, featuring the one spiderling Charlotte birth that survived and how he struggles in adulthood with the knowledge that his mother ate his father. That is really inside. And perhaps my favorite, Gardner Webb sounds like the guy that is escorting Charlotte Wilder to her debutante ball. Oh, no. Do you spent your afternoon thinking what Gardner Webb sounds like? Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. I can't wait for the Here's Your Sign segment next. This is going to be topic number two David during Michigan State's first round win over Bradley in that their NCAA tournament coach Tom iso was caught yelling at freshman forward Aaron Henry here's Kevin Harlan and reggie Miller on the call

there was a little bit of animation here from coach Tom iso for you as freshman Aaron Henry you would think on a 10-0 run tom iso would be happy isle now having words with the freshman Henry, who seems a little bit perplexed. It wasn't just that Izzo ran out on the court to kind of confront Henry. It was like he put his arms in this really weird posture, kind of like, I'm going to put up my dukes, you know, in an old-fashioned movie. Like, it was going to hit him or something. It was really strange. When this blew up on Twitter, predictably, Isso then doubled down at his press conference. To me, it was ridiculous.

the way it blew up, I just would publicly thank the many, many people that just saw it as ridiculous how people reacted. But I'm, I'm nothing to do with anything with me, with Aaron. I was thinking of benching him, but I decided I'm going to start him anyway and we're going to move on. And he's a great kid that has improved so much. but for us to be a championship team, for us to move on, he's got to continue to improve even more. So what do you think, David? Was there anything to see here?

Oh, wow. That's a good question. If you really want to take a stoic point of view, it's like, no, not particularly, because the fact that the only reason it's a subject that we're discussing is because the camera happened to catch it, right? I mean, I'm sure this sort of thing happens in every game. I mean, not in every single basketball game,

Every practice. How about that? Yeah. I mean, and the, I mean, one thing that was, that was notable in the, in the chorus of ex-player is coming out to defend Tom Izzo. And don't get me wrong, those are, those are real and, and important for this conversation. But it was notable that there was just a litany of voices of ex-state players that were, that were, that could immediately relate to this sort of thing happening with, with Coach Tom Izzo, you know?

I mean, that's, it's like, you know, I mean, how many times, like, you know, if it had come out after Bobby Knight through the chair that he threw chairs every day, that doesn't make it better, you know? I mean, it's, it's a significant, it's a significant moment. And whether or not it happens all the time. I mean, it's, it's, and if it does, I don't think that makes it any better. It makes it worse. I think it, I think the thing about it happening all the time goes to exactly why this is so explosive, because I think all of us that love college sports, and that includes. me, kind of think, know this happens and we don't really grapple with it very much. And I think what we know is that every college football coach and every college basketball coach minus evidence to

the contrary is a tyrant. And they are a tyrant who rules over an unpaid workforce. And, you know, we love the wins. We love, you know, beating Michigan if we're Michigan state fans three times in one season. But we don't want to come to grips with there is a lot of crazy to abusive behavior that goes into those wins. And I think something like this just dumps it out in the open. And then all of a sudden you have to say, ugh, ugh. And it doesn't, and even if you ultimately come to the conclusion that look, Tom Izzo,

as a basketball coach, has a right to yell at his players. Like that just seems like that should be somewhere, you know, as long as it's not derogatory, as long as it's not, you know, over a certain line that there's a certain amount of yelling and coaching and a really aggressive coaching that goes into sports. That doesn't mean it has to make you feel comfortable. And it doesn't mean it has to make you feel comfortable that you are, you know, endorsing and rooting for a product that is built on this stuff. I mean, to me, that that's what is so squeamish about this whole thing. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, listen, I guess I'm open to the argument on the other side of it. And I think that the most compelling one, weirdly, is like Charles Barkley's response,

which was just like, shut up, this stuff happens, you know? And I'm as sort of dismissive as that is, I think that that's the closest to any kind of, like, honest defense of it that we're going to get. Scott Van Pelt had a, had a one last thing about it on his show, which, and I love SVP. I mean, I mean, really, really agree with him almost all the time. but his take on this was like, life is hard and we have to prepare our kids. And when they're, you know, when they get turned down

and when they're asked for a raise, then like we, and they don't know what to do, then we're going to wish we had given them more exposure to the hard life. It's like, dude, if my, if Bill Simmons yelled at me the way that Tom Isso yelled at this kid,

there would be nobody working at the ringer. No, we would just leave. Or ESPN, you know? That would be completely. He would be, yeah, you get fired from ESPN for, I mean, and if you don't. Completely. and it'd be completely inappropriate.

And I know that it's not a one-to-one comparison, you know? And obviously there's, you can make the case that like, whatever, that you got to, you're already yelling because you're out there in a loud place and it's just one, one notch on the volume knob up or something. But it's still just like, come on. I mean, it's not, like, it's fine if, I'm much more willing to, to listen to arguments in defense of Izzo that acknowledged that what he did was just wild in any other scenario, right? I mean, just like wildly inappropriate in any other moment in human life.

If you want to say, yes, that's like what he did would get him fired or maybe arrested in almost any other scenario in existence. But it's okay here for this reason. Then I'll listen to you. But like to just brush it off, like, you know, you got to like teach our, like, this isn't the same as the like every kid gets a trophy argument. You know, this is just, it's silly. And one other thing before we ditch this subject, that it's worth pointing out that this

has become a little bit of a partisan issue too. I don't know if you've noticed this, but, but I mean, I know it's all part of the same, like, you know, Trump is, is pro concussions, you know, real men get concussions point of view. That's exactly what it is, yes. But, but, yeah, there's a, I mean, the liberals are making us all soft. Absolutely. I googled Tom Izzo to see what the top hits were that I was going to get. And there's a regular Fox stuff. One of the first hits was a daily caller, I mean, daily caller, for God's sake. article saying Charles Barkley calls out the jackasses criticizing Tom Isso for yelling at Aaron Henry. Thankfully, they put some stars in jackasses, so we wouldn't know what they were saying.

The delicate daily call. They were very delicate about it. Yeah, but the, but yeah, I mean, it's a, it was a piece that was just sort of harping on the, you know, the, the, the, the, some of the points that I had just made. It's, it is, it is interesting that like, you know, I mean, I think I, I, I feel pretty comfortable saying, you know, I grew up around a lot of people who are probably ideologically closer to the daily caller than the average listener of this podcast. And I think a lot of those people would probably, you know, punch Tom iso in the face if he was coaching if he did that to their kid.

What you said a minute ago was I think a way more eloquent version of what I said. But when when somebody does something that would be transgressive or bonkers in normal life that's okay in coaching, that's news. That's news to people to point that out. Again, that's what I'm saying. Wishing that away is not an answer to that. this. Like we cannot like just pretending that doesn't exist is what gets us through the day as college sports fans and probably sports sports fans. Yes. And so it is worth even if again,

even if we don't say naughty naughty Tomizzo, you don't get to, you know, you don't get to yell at your players. It is worth trying to come to grips with this. Sort of in a related story, USC Irvine coach Russell Turner. This is Deadspin reporting and me summarizing. decided to call they were playing Oregon the other day UC Irvine the anteaters being one of the beloved Cinderella's of the tournament

Russell Turner Irvine's coach decided to call one of the Ducks players Lewis King Queen during the tournament Lewis Queen

This is news to me All right And here is Russell Turner explaining why he tried to do this in a press count Talking closely with Lewis King, you talked to him for a little bit. Can you share

maybe what you were talking to him about? Yeah, I'll tell you. I would say a double-team queen to try to see if I could irritate him. And I did. And I kept talking to my team about what we wanted to do. We were calling him queen because I knew it might irritate him

because of how important he is to their team. The queen and chess was to play on his name of King. And it bothered him. Started thinking about me, started thinking about Max. But he came back and finished the game really strong. And he'd had a thing or two to say to me during the game. And I wanted to let him know that what I'd done was out of respect.

Do we really think he was talking about him out of respect because he was comparing him to the queen on a chessboard? Is that the... And I think this is a good example because this shows how, oh, I'm just yelling instructions at a player can very easily go into the bad place and certainly does all the time go into the bad place. So this subject is worthy of scrutiny. And I saw in a later part of that Scott Van Pell clip that you were referring to him saying,

this doesn't concern you, you, the people complaining about it because Michigan state players are okay with this. A lot of Michigan state players past and present came out said, hey, we're okay with this. No big deal. Of course it concerns us. Of course, Tom Izzo is a state. employee. If the governor of Michigan is yelling in public at his chief of staff, that is of course a story. And that doesn't, if the college guys are okay with it, that's okay? That is ridiculous. I just, I don't even understand, I just don't even understand the rationale of that.

I just don't. That just seems like it would just end all journalism of, of, in, you know, everything having to do with college sports as long as you can get the players to sign off on it. How many players are okay with not being paid? Does that mean that it's right? again I love Van Pelt and I just don't get that at all I will say there there have been some level-headed voices out there I want to give you know kudos to Jay Billis who I believe it was on get up today had a or yesterday had a pretty level-headed take on the whole thing saying you know it's there's legacy coaches they can get away with it but he teaches coaches

how to be coaches and he would never he would tell them all to never do anything like this in their lives and weirdly the most level like the level-headed take of the of the weekend award goes to our buddy skip bail whose quote was, this was just a bad look for college basketball. All right, David, now it's time for the notebook dump. The most important moral issue of our time, do journalists tape record their interviews?

The Columbia Journalism Review did a call around and talked to several writers. The most striking response was from long-form legend, Gay Talese, who says, tape recorders, which came into prominence when I was a daily reporter on the Times in the late 50s have ruined the art of magazine writing. The recorder is interject.

the Q&A interview into modern magazine writing, the result? The writer has forgotten how to listen and ask the same question repeatedly as I do, and surrender to the person who is the subject of the piece, that is the movie star or other celebrity or politician, have taken over the article. What the subject says, not the writer's voice, has become the essence of the article. The writer today lacks stature. Thanks, tape recorder.

So it's very odd to accuse the tape recorder of ruining magazine writing. Tim Marchman from Gizmodo responded when I pointed this out on Twitter by saying what he's saying is it ruined a certain kind of magazine writing where you could sort of let us say nicely kind of mold the celebrity's words and tell the story you want to tell without any accountability. And I think that's exactly right. That just struck me as really weird. There was yet another behind the scenes piece.

We really need more behind the scenes pieces about journalism. I say this is a media critic. We're really lacking in podcast. casts in places that tell us how journalists do their daily work. Another behind the scenes piece with Taffy Brodesser Ackner. She's talking about tape recording interviews because

God help me, we're going to talk about this to the end of time. She says, I have a transcriber, a very nice woman who gets upset at me if I do interviews while we eat or if the sound quality is terrible. And when I read that, I said, aha, because that is actually a hidden thing in all the tape recording argument stuff. Some

people in journalism have people that transcribe their interviews for them. They don't transcribe them themselves, right? That's a status marker in journalism. Some of us poor schlubs are sitting there and our ears are just bleeding after hours and hours of this crap. But some people have people that transcribe it. And so if somebody was going to transcribe every minute of tape you put together, of course you would tape everything. Some of this is just work, right?

That just comes down to work. NPR's Lindsay McKenna directs us, David, to this important subject. the writer Rachira Sharma tweeted a picture of a monkey and noted that it was every journalist headshot. Did you see this tweet over the week? Yes, it was fantastic. I once had a boss who said that the key when you are a journalist taking an author photo is never let the photographer convince you

to put your hand on your chin because you will always look like a huge dick. I thought that was relevant. Just get your hands out of your photos. It's just shoulders up, guys. Come on. And don't look like the monkey. in 2020 campaign pandering.

We had a moment with South Bend, Indiana mayor, Pete Buttigieg, who's running for the Democratic nomination talking to Esquire's Ryan Lissa. Lizza asked, you're a big James Joyce buff. Is running for president more like Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake? To which Buttigieg judge responded

definitely more like Ulysses than it is portrait of an artist as a young man. Finnegan's wake is dreams speak. Ulysses is consciousness, meaning reality. But here's why I think Ulysses is extremely relevant. And he goes on. my question for you David is this pandering it's pandering when bedo goes to waterberger

is it pandering when buddhajudge talks about finnigan's wake no it's pandering when like it's pandering when a politician learns like three lines in spanish to like you know to talk to a spanish speaking crowd it's not pandering when someone who is a lifelong fluent spanish speaker you know reverts to spanish when they're in a conversation in a similar way buddhajudge is like bizarre robot brain being going on to splice

is not pandering. This is the weird person that he is, and it's just, he's awesome for it. I don't know, I don't have any feelings about whether this man should be president or not, but every time there's a new, like, there's a new tidbit about him learning a language just for fun or like reading all these books or whatever else. There's always people coming out of the woodwork saying he's a tryhard saying whatever else. No, this guy is just an amazing, beautiful weirdo, and I think we should all sit back and appreciate it. This is a story last week. here is Fox News analyst Kennedy. That is the former MTV Vijay Kennedy.

Yes. On Beto O'Rourke. She's the second voice you'll hear in this clip. Here's a Republican from National Review saying, Weirdo O'Rourke. How soon do you think it'll be before we hear the president give him this moniker? I mean, he's already had it made for him by Democrats as well. They can use the name I gave him.

Democrats are coming after Beto. Beta. Beto O'Dar. Badoer. No, beta. He's a beta male. Oh, okay. He's seriously.

I mean, all the other women in the race have much more fire and strength than Beta. Now, that got dragged on Twitter, but you and I, David, are fans of terrible puns. And where does Beta O'Dork rank in the Strain Pun

Hall of Fame? I think when you're considering these strain puns, you have to, you try to imagine at what age you would have first made this pun. I think Beta O'Dorick clocks in. I think the over under is 11.5, so I don't think that quite meets the quality scale for national television, but hey, it's Kennedy. So what do you get?

Remember when we were in college and our pal Eric got involved in the whole kind of vegetarian PETA universe, expanded universe? Yes. And we were introduced to the term for the McDonald's mascot as Rotten McMurter. If we had an NCAA bracket matching up Beta O'Dorke and Rotten McMurter, who do you think would come out on top of that? there. I don't know, man. At least beta-odoric rhymes. I mean, you know, it's, it has a little bit of that going for it. Here's a segue. Speaking of strained puns, it's not time for David Shoemaker guesses the celebrity profile headline. Damn it. Okay. Last week we did an old Esquire piece about Apollo 13, uh, reader Doug McCoo-Yette. McCoo-yet, I'm sorry. I'm mispronouncing your name. Doug. I appreciate it, though.

Uh, says the easier and superior headline probably would have been Houston. We have an Oscar. Uh, good stuff. I agree. David, this is a special Dan Jenkins edition, which comes from the April 23rd, 1979 edition of Sports Illustrated. Here's the setup. Gopher Fuzzy Zeller wins the 79 Masters over Tom Watson and Ed Sneed on a second hole playoff. But all you need to know, really, Fuzzy Zeller wins the Masters. I always want to go with like Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuzzah.

Was that around in 1979? Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear? Yeah, sure. Is that like a hundred years old? But Fuzzy is the place to go. Fuzzy is the place to go. Fuzzy. The opposite of Fuzzy is.

Green. In the audio sense. Oh, damn. Crisp. Womer. Clear. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Clear. Fuzzy came in. Fuzzy came in clear. Fuzzy came in clear. Fuzzy came in clear. Clear. Oh, God. Okay. That makes a lot more sense than what I was saying.

Yeah, okay, that's good. Not bad for 79 Sports Illustrated. All right, that's the press box this week. He's David Shoemaker, research by Chris Almeida. Production by Jim Cunningham. More lukewarm takes about the media next week. See you then, David. See you later, man.

David? Mm-hmm. Sounds like the name of a kid whose parent would pay a large sum of money to be on a Division I lacrosse team. David? Yes. Sounds like the villain in an 80s ski comedy who is threatening to buy and shut down the fun but unprofitable local mountain resort. Okay, that's good.

That's good. That was great. That makes a lot more sense than what I was saying. David? Yes. You will always look like a huge dick. Shut up. This stuff happens?

That just struck me as really weird. An amazing, beautiful weirdo, and I think we should all sit back and appreciate it. The liberals are making us all soft. Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, listen. Absolutely. is nowhere near as terrifying, alarming, just like physically upsetting as it is to see that happen

in real life right in front of your eye.