The Press Box - NBA Announcing’s Golden Age and Other TV Notes. Plus, a 2024 Campaign Update and Fox Trial Cheat Sheet.

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Bryan and David break down all the media notes from the first weekend of the NBA playoffs. They highlight LeBron and the Lakers' win, touch on Sunday’s injury reports, and discuss whether we’re in announcing’s golden age with individuals such as Mike Breen, Ian Eagle, and Kevin Harlan (5:58). Later, they dive into a new segment, This Week in 2024, where they talk through what’s happening on the campaign trail (26:44). Then, they provide a cheat sheet of things to know heading into the Fox News–Dominion trial (37:20). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's official. One Shining Podcast is back, and I am your host, Tate Frazier. And as March Badness begins, we're covering everything from Selection Sunday all the way to the championship and beyond. We're going to have great guests that are coming through on the show. And look, if you're a friend of the program and you're already subscribed, you don't have to do anything. OSP is back. It's going to be right back in your feed. And if you're not a friend of the program, and this is your first time on the rodeo, then let me tell you this. You need to go to Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast and smash subscribe today because the OSP show is back. David?

Yes. You know I always love studying the status symbols of journalists. Oh, yeah. For instance, do you have a podcast? Mm-hmm. Do you have a newsletter? Are you allowed to write long form? Yeah.

Well, there's a new status symbol for journalists. Do you host the OssP? official podcast of an HBO quality drama. I bring this up because New York Magazine Profiler extraordinaire, Olivia Nuzzi, tweeted that she will be hosting the pod for the new show White House Plumbers, which comes out next month. Tara Swisher is already hosting the Succession Pod. So, David, when will you be attaching yourself to an HBO drama that everybody already loves? I hosted my Westward.

that Westworld podcast a couple years too early, I guess. If only that were coming along now, maybe they would identify the talent that we had on that show and make it the official podcast. I think I missed my window because the makers of Brockmeyer never called. You would have been perfect for that. Well, one chance. Just do the rewatch.

Start now. I love this because, of course, there's presumably money involved in hosting the official podcast of an HBO show. There's proximity to Hollywood. which every journalist loves. Right. At some point in history, the whole saying about every journalist

having a movie script in their desk drawer was replaced by a journalist having an idea for an HBO show or three in their desk drawer. And then also, let's face it, if we did a U-Gov poll of every journalist, would you like to keep your current job or be the quarterback of an HBO television series?

Oh, wait, we just did the poll. 99% are going with HBO. Do you think the quarterback of an HBO podcast outranks the quarterback of an NFL franchise at this point in the journalism world? Wait a second. Quarterback, the podcast companion or actually run the HBO show. Oh, so run the HBO show versus be a quarterback. I think so. What about quarterback the podcast versus be a quarterback?

I think the podcast still wins. Wait, podcasting has come up that much? Well, I think in a journalism world, you know, there'd be some justifiable trepidation about, you know, your measure success metrics on the playing field. We got to add this to two of my favorite journalist status symbols of recent years. Frank Rich, when he was still a journalist, now he is actually producing succession, among other shows. He was doing some work for New York Magazine. And one time he interviewed Chris Rock, I remember this, and they presented. printed it and Frank Rich had not written the introduction to the interview.

I mean, it just went right into question one? Well, like somebody did like a third person intro. Oh, it's not like he had failed to do it. Someone just filled in the gaps for him. Okay. So you came, you pushed record. You forwarded that audio file to your editor. For transcription and then you're good.

All good. I don't even have to write Chris Rock is one of the most interesting comedians of this or any age. You just skip that step entirely. Yeah. But the best one was Michael Lewis when he profiled Barack Obama for Vanity Fair. Oh, I know. I remember this. The photos Vanity Fair used for the piece were of Obama with Michael Lewis.

Yes. Yes. You wrote a profile of the president and the photos are of you. Mm-hmm. That's a status symbol. That is. That's usually reserved for only for like. like actors interviewing actors type pieces, you know?

Totally. And this is before the age of, you know, I'm interviewing somebody for a podcast. I'm going to take an Instagram photo of them. Mm-hmm. Those shaking hands next to the mics. Yeah. Michael Lewis and Obama.

If you don't believe me, look this up. I swear to God it happened. Maybe is, but is Michael Lewis like the, like the newspaper and the ransom photograph of that thing where it's just like, well, we know there's like Obama has a White House photographer.

could have been taken at any point in time. This proves that Michael Lewis was there, and they were taking pictures, and the pictures are from the interview. You're saying Vanney Fairwater would establish that they do expensive photography on their own. As if they needed to prove that point, yeah.

Coming up on today's show, the NBA playoffs began this weekend. We've got an old guy still got an alert, a nightmare storyline for basketball writers, and a new golden age of NBA play-by-play. Then we bring you the very latest on the 2024 presidential race, including the booing of Mike Pence and the end of Pompeo Mania. Plus, how to sound smart about this week's Fox News trial.

All that more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Schumacher, producer Erica Cervantes here. David, how about we start with a weekend's worth of TV notes about the NBA playoffs. On Sunday, we had an old guy still got it. claxon going off when LeBron James and the Lakers beat the Grizzlies in game one. There was even a Matt Iglesias tweet about middle-aged people needing to root for LeBron

that Nick Field sent along. Best thing about the old guy still got its storyline in sports is you don't have to wait that long for it to come to fruition. It didn't wait a good 40, 50 years to start writing those stories about Martin's Scorsese? Yeah. That new movie at Khan, is that going to be

any good this year? Did he adapt David Grand the right way? With sports, you just do it instantly. LeBron James won the NBA title three years ago.

There literally doesn't have to be any time between this guy is the goat and the old guy still got it. Gray-haired Kevin love playing for the Miami Heat.

I don't know if you got a glimpse of that this weekend. Really felt like the true old guy watershed moment. It's funny that the gray hair is more, the gray hair is so much rarer. Because like in the real world, the gray hair is,

you know, it's not that big of a deal, right? Especially if you have a full head of hair with a little bit of gray in it. There's some dignity to that, right? Yeah, silver fox. Yeah.

We're not talking about like a skullet or anything, you know, with like long gray strands in the back, but. Anyway, yeah, no, no. Kevin Love, definitely holding it down in the old man corner. Maybe he's just looking for the old guy still got it recognition. Maybe he's really trying to grab onto that. He's leaning in. Yeah, because otherwise you're like, man, Kevin Love's really lost a step.

But with the gray hair, you immediately go, old guy still got it. I'm not just a useful player. I'm fighting back father time here. One more run in me. I felt sorry for our sports writer friends on Press Row on Sunday. Oh, why? The big story was not great basketball players doing things. It was great basketball players getting hurt.

This was an injury report just from Sunday. Yonis Antenacupo out for the remainder of game one. The Lakers, Anthony Davis, out for the remainder of the first half because he couldn't lift his arm. the Grizzlies John Morant in jeopardy for game two with a hand injury and the heats Tyler Hero out for game two with a broken hand. That was just Sunday. Yeah. And you know what we love to do with sports writers during the NBA playoffs.

We like to treat every game like a referendum on who's better. Yeah. Or at least ask, what did we learn from game one? Yeah. Of Sun's Clippers say. And then there's an injury. and the answer is nothing. The answer is nothing.

The honest answer is nothing. And we don't get to overread every single game in the playoffs, which is the fun thing to do. But it's like it's almost worse than nothing because it's like an inverted something. Rissilo was on Bill's pod today and I think made the,

made, you know, a very smart point which is just like, I never want to overreact to game one. No matter what happens. We always come out of game one thinking one thing and and it only, it never bears out. to be true, you know, it almost never matters. It's like, but when you

when someone's injured, then you're like, wow, the bucks really got killed, but Janus wasn't there. And so if Janus were there, that's the implicit part. If Janus had been there, it would have been a very different story. Well, we really don't know that either. We don't know anything, but we're like intuiting something from this nothing. I know. You're left with one of those phrases I heard all day,

Sunday, you know, this injury, this could be a game changer or even a series changer. So while you're telling me if Yonis doesn't play one of if not the best basketball players in the world that this could be a game changer yep thanks guys for that one guy did not find this to be such a take killer and that was stephen a smith this was at half time at the lakers grizzlies game and dude this is why stephen a is better at his job than you and i are is better at his job than anybody else who

does that kind of job yeah because anthony davis gotten hurt basically going up for a rebound he got tangled up. He mouths, I can't lift my arm. Everybody in Lakers lane is like, oh my God, our season is now completely over. If they had cut to you and I at halftime, we'd be sitting there all somber, all sad. Here is Stephen A.

Finding a way to get a strong take out of Anthony Davis's injury. Without question, I don't want to hear anything about LeBron James in the block or the fast break dunk or whatever, Darren Jackson is doing right now. Anthony Davis, is he playing it again? Because I'm telling you right now,

we're in the city of angels. We're in Los Angeles. In this city, if he can't go and he's injured, this city will be done with him. They'll be done with him. And I won't blame him. So you see here at the end, he's getting to the second take, which is Lakers fans being like, man,

AD's injured again. This happens all the time. But the first part of that, he was mad at the idea that somebody would be talking about anything but Anthony Davis's injury at halftime. Mind of this is having like minutes before halftime. Right. And there was even a little,

meta media criticism in there because I don't want to hear about LeBron's block, LeBron's dunk. Those had actually been the sponsored elements of the halftime show like a Meta Quest play of the half or whatever it was. That was amazing. I don't want to hear you talk about anything but this incredibly consequential injury that just happened. Don't you dare try to change the subject on me? It's why it's better at his job than we are.

Yeah, but a couple of times I tune into the half-down show on Saturday or the studio show. seem like Mike Greenberg was just like goofing on Stephen A. Smith every time I turned it on. How he wasn't, how he left the studio to go to the bathroom to much like laughter and making fun of his orange blazer. Is this

a directive from on high? Just like, let's take the piss out of Stephen A just for everybody's enjoyment. That sounds to me exactly like inside the NBA. Yeah. But that's not what you identify Greenie and Stephen A with. Mm-mm.

Also, that friendship, the relationship on inside is sort of earned, right? For years and years of watching this, this just felt a little, like, I'm sure Stephen A. Smith and my Greenberger friends, we see them on TV together a lot, but it just felt a little bit force, which made it deeply uncomfortable. To me, to me, I'm sure average viewer, average Joe viewers loved it. One of the interesting things about that show is they completely reoriented it around Stephen A, which is something that should make you kind of squint a little. bit and maybe even think is this the best idea but it is so much better than the last version

of that show. Yeah. It is way, way better. Full stop. Got an instant think piece for you. We haven't done one of these in a while. Here's my nut graph or my nut sentence. We are in the golden age of NBA play-by-play announcing. Oh, okay. We got Mike Green. Sure. We got Kevin Harlan. One of the best. He did a nice, seamless handoff from game to game on Sunday. Yeah.

We got Iron Eagle. Love him. Soon to be joining us on national broadcast during the playoffs. I submit that I cannot remember a better big three in NBA play by play in my lifetime.

There have been some great ones, but in terms of feeling like if this is a big game that's on ESPN or turn, I will most likely be in really, really good hands. And that all three guys are in their primes, which for announcers is like 30s to 60s, when we occasionally see people push either side of that, Harlan 62, Breen 61, Eagle 54.

Yeah. What say you? I agree. I agree. I was admiring the sort of seamlessness of the whole thing when I was watching the Dave Pasch and Hughie Brown call the game the night. I mean, it's like Dave Pasch is like he's a Cardinals announcer. I mean, he's

that we're in Arizona Cardinals and play by play guy. You know, this is a side gig for him and he was doing, I mean, he was out there. I should be doing a Hughie Brown impression as I'm describing Dave Patch's announcing. I realize that, but I'm not going to go into the second person

just for the benefit of the audience. But yeah, no, I think you're right. It's, you know, And they're all, they got these big time games. Obviously, the NBA finals will be a different stage. But all these games are sort of running back to back. You really get to appreciate the quality, right? You get to see, like you said, the seamless handoff.

I don't know, I think that, I don't know. I'm sure you've talked to people about this. I don't know if calling an NBA game is easier than calling a football game. Obviously, a totally different skill set than calling a baseball game because that's more of a storyteller. Well, prior to this up fast-paced season, certainly more of a storyteller's genre. But like, yeah, I mean, the NBA just has like all those announcers working at such a high level. You almost want to get, I want to read the think piece. Why is it so, like, why are they all so good right now?

I think part of its timing. I think part of it is the fact that all three of those guys, Breen, Harlan and Eagle, were all basketball guys first and foremost. Yeah. Their first big jobs for the Knicks and for the Nets and for the Kansas City Kings in Harlan's case. So even though Harlan and Eagle do other sports, they've really got the pace and the feel of a basketball game really well. Yeah. I think what's also interesting is they are three different flavors of ice cream.

Mm-hmm. In an interesting way, Eagle is a cat skills comedian in many ways, very East Coast. Yeah, we've talked about that. Yeah. Harlan has the Midwest father-in-law vibes. Green Bay by way of Kansas City. And Mike Breen just makes very hard things look so freaking easy all the time. I also think what's interesting about those three is they're very unjaded about the sport they cover.

We've had a lot of really good announcers that have that edge to them. Yeah. That, you know. You're absolutely right about this. I'm going to call a great game, but I'm just going to kind of give you a little like, there we go, another day at the office. I never feel that way about any of those three guys. And again, I'm open to both approaches.

Nothing wrong with a little edge, but they just feel like they love basketball and that they would not want to be anywhere else but calling those games. Yeah, I wonder if that's to do with their influences too. I mean, you'd have to talk to you've talked to all of them. I have to ask specifically, but I, but you know, there were great football announcers, obviously legendary football and baseball announcers, but that from the previous generation, but they were so singular. And there was something about our, when we were kids, we were listening to Marv Albert or Bob

Kossis, whoever calling the NBA games, that maybe there was something that sort of influences them all in different ways, you know, it, but it does, it's, it's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, you can see, hear a lot of Marv in both Breed and Eagle. And Marv was a cartoon character version of an announcer in so many ways, but he wasn't singular in the way that, I don't know, like some of the real legends of football or baseball are. He was an announcer. He was a play-by-play guy.

And you could learn a ton from it. And also had that idea of being a really good play-by-play announcer and then also having this other gear to be funny. Yeah. kind of wink at the audience just a little bit here and there. Yeah. Tell a joke like you were the only person

in the audience who got it. And not an inside, not a, nobody knows I got a belt a whiskey at my jacket pocket joke, like an actual like smart joke. No, but the influences thing is interesting

and I just, I don't know. I mean, those, and they just have a ton of reps. I mean, too, right? It's like,

it's not the, let's go find an announcer who does another sport that we like and put him right here. and suffer kind of through some really good announcing, but somebody who does not feel like they are an organic part of the NBA. All three of those guys do.

Can I ask you a question? Sure. I think we were on a text thread together this weekend about some color commentators. You were there, right? Yeah, I was. Without revealing anything else, I have an argument I want to float. Okay. Or a theory I want to float.

I don't know how strongly I believe in this. Instant think piece, one might say. Instant think piece. is the only, if you're, this isn't specific to basketball. And across the sports, the only color commentator stick that actually has legs,

that has long-term success, is being a cheerleader. Being a rah-rah, I'm just happy to be here, guy. Mm. Because the good ones, the smart ones, the incisive ones,

all just, it's all very short, it's all, they don't flame out in some sort of like super negative way, but they hit a high and it's never the same. I don't know if it's that it's too much work, that you have to be super close to the game, whatever.

We all make fun of, you know, Chris Collinsworth's, like, you're like, oh, you know, it's all shucks stuff. And, and, and, and, and, and, and Hubey Brown, but it's just like, it's that, Hughie Brown's been doing this for a hundred years. And it's just the, like, man, this is just the coolest, every game, it's the coolest thing he's ever done. It's the biggest change that's happened in my lifetime,

what you're describing, is the color commentator going from a guy who is blowing, people up on television pretty frequently to a guy who is telling you that this is the greatest performance and that this is basketball, football, whatever played at its highest possible level. The calculus completely changed for networks. I think in the 80s and even into the 90s, it was really going off the old Howard Coasell jococracy thing. You're going to be a jock. You have to be a journalist, too. And the way you earn your stripes is by,

killing people who may be people that you used to play against. Yeah. Or that you're in the same social world as. Now it's the reverse. If you want to be a journalist, you've got to be a jock too, right? You almost kind of have to be part of the team. There you go. Yeah.

And it's like, it's funny. And like the old world was, I mean, if you remember like Bill Walton and Steve Jones calling the NBA finals on NBC, that was the old world. Bill Walton now who's in the Uncle Sam outfit and, you know, just talking Grateful Dead on college games, that was not the way he was as an NBA announcer. He was very, very, very, very critical. And he was out there, you know, just like, like I'm kind of like a talk show host making points out here. And the whole world is flipped. And I do miss the old world a little bit because I think it was just possible people could have a bad game.

I will say the one exception that proves the rule you mentioned is probably Jeff Van Gundy, and maybe you could also put Mark Jackson in there. Because I don't feel this is the greatest performance I've ever seen, guys. You're absolutely right. Van Gundy's one of one, though. And that's, I think, what makes him fun. But it's also not schick. I mean, if part of the, maybe he's the exception that proves the rule, because if there is,

because if it's a, and I don't mean to imply that anybody's, like, not working hard at their job. but when you're closer to the game, it obviously, when you're fresh out of playing, it takes a lot more day-to-day homework to prep for a game. I mean, I think most people who watch sports

probably have no concept of how many hours, you know, just what the amount of time it takes, to prep for a game adequately to be able to call it like you're, like, like you were there playing the day before

to really be in-depth. And in basketball, the degree of difficulty is so much higher than football because even though there's fewer players, you're calling a different team every day. Like every, at least every second day,

you got to know everything about the Indiana Pacers and then after that, you know, the pelicans or whoever. I think one of the, I loved Van Gundy. There's almost no one better than him.

I don't even know who I would put above him as far as color guys go, but the way that Jeff, my favorite Jeff Van Gundy moments are when he pops up on Zach Lowe's podcast and just, he's a little bit, takes him a little moment

to gather his thoughts, like unlike when he's on the, when he's calling a game, but he knows everything. Like he is so in, in tune with what's going on that the amount of work that he clearly puts in, researching, watching film might make him the exception of the rule. That's my only defense. Think piece. Well, we'll get back to it. He has to because the windows he gets to talk and during a basketball game are

so much smaller than a football announcer's windows. Plus, he's got to share time with Mark Jackson. Plus, he's got to be a looming coaching candidate every season. So he's got to be, you got to know every player's tendencies in the entire league. One more instant think piece for you. We are in a golden age for basketball announcing puns. Go on. You need three examples to write a think piece. So let me give you three. I and Eagle.

Master of the good bad pun. Jim Nance calling this year's NCAA tournament. It felt it was very pun heavy. Almost if he was like greasing the wheels when he turns over the mic to Eagle on that broadcast next year. Mm-hmm. An example number three, David, comes from Sunday. When the Lakers, Austin Reeves went off in the second half against the Grizzlies, ESPN's Mark Jackson said this.

This just in. Austin Powers. Austin Powers. And let me do you one better, David. How about a fourth example? This is a hell of a think piece now. When the Lakers, Rui Hachamura went off, Mark Jackson went back to the whole one more time.

Van Gundy said he's okay with Hachemora taking a shot. I call this a Rui awakening. A Rui awakening. Oh, no. We may not be the perfect messengers for this point, but I feel broadcast may be getting a little too pun-heavy. If you saw Rui Awakening, well, okay, I guess if it made the home, if it made a newspaper front page that would validate it,

but if someone tweeted Rui Awakening at you, would it even garner mention on the podcast? I don't know. I don't know. I might be writing it down for the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Speaking of which, David. Coming up in 30 seconds, the latest from the 2024 presidential campaign

or no more Pompeo in circumstance. But first, let us do that 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 senior nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received today's winner which is less a joke than a kind of generalized anger came from the tweets about the hellish parade of ads for the show dr pimple popper which kept popping up during the NBA playoffs pun intended some examples it's while the dr pimple popper got more playing time than

insert player tonight please outlaw Dr. Pimple Popper commercials in the new CBA. And finally, I can't wait until Dr. Pimple Popper breaks down the Warriors Kings game at halftime tomorrow. Thanks to Rob Pollard and Michael L. Avery, if you thought Dr. Pimple Popper made Evil Dead Rise look like the third man. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, I want to give you a new feature, David. in 2024. Get us all caught up on the nascent, only in journalism word, presidential campaign. On Friday afternoon, Fox News carried a big update on 2024. Let us listen closely, maybe for the last time, to Mike Pompeo.

I have made a decision. I was on your show a number of months back, and you asked what I was going to do in 2024. and Susan and I have now been thinking about this, working at it, and have prayerfully come to the conclusion that we're not going to join the race in 2024, that while we care deeply about America and the issues that I've been talking about this last year and a half, and frankly, for decades matter an awful lot. This isn't our moment. This isn't the time for us to seek elected office. What was your favorite part of the Mike Pompeo presidential campaign?

I'm not you're going to say that announcement. I don't know what the. I'm so confused by this. We made so many jokes about whether or not he was actually running for president and why on earth he was pretending to run for president. But what was the point of bowing out at this point? Is it because he's got, he has, they were going to, do you think the producers of this week or whatever were just like,

we can promise you a segment if you bow out today? But if you put this off for a month, we can't promise you a one on one. Well, it was on Brett Bear's show on Friday afternoon. That's right. It was on Brett Bear. So I was going to call it a Friday news dump, but then his whole campaign was kind of a Friday news dump. Remember when he went to Ukraine and nobody noticed? Yeah.

It wasn't a daring visit to a cherished ally. It was the answer to the trivia question. What's the thing nobody noticed during Trump indictment week? So your question is, why would you bow out now? That's, I think, the right question. I guess the companion would be why would you bow in, given all the evidence? I guess even if you're wrong-headed, even if you're delusional enough to think,

if he's delusional enough to have thought that he had a chance, it's very conceivable that delusion did not include Trump running again, right? He never had a chance, but even if he thought he had a chance, he could still have believed, he still could say, well, you know, I can't beat Trump, clearly, because I worked in Trump's, in his cabinet,

like that's not my, There's no lane there for me. So I guess Trump really, really functionally running might have talked. I don't know. It's so dumb. But why he ever thought it was possible in the first place was just bonkers. Has there ever been a secretary of state with such a low profile in a modern era with such a relatively low profile but low approval rating at the same time? I mean, it's just I can't think of, I can't.

Do we have any Rex Tillerson surveys lately? Because that happened. But Rex Tillerson was like, I think widely seen as just like a dupe, right? I mean, like he was. Is that just 99% no opinion? Yeah. Or I guess people dislike the idea of him, but whether or not it was like him as a person. Then he stand up to Trump before he walked out the door.

Wasn't that the deal with Rex? He definitely had one of the many, many, you've gone too far moments. Yeah, the adults in the room moments. The Pompeo is like, yeah, Pompeo is sort of like a figment of the imagination. He only exists to people booking Sunday shows. I'm not sure that he actually... Without that Britt Bear clip, I'm not sure that he actually is a human being. So the obvious reason he dropped out is because his polls look terrible.

Yeah. You're not going to beat Trump. But listen to how he answered when Brett Bear asked him, are you dropping up because you're losing? When you made that decision, were you thinking about how, what lane you would take and how you would go up against your former boss, former President Trump.

If you look at the latest polls, he's up, you know, exponentially on the nearest competitor. Did that factor in? No, not at all. Not at all. Not one single bit. By the way, you know, David, do you know what presidential candidates drop out after?

What? After much consideration. And if they're Republicans, after much consideration and prayer. Yeah. I like that. That's when it's time. That's how you know.

I would love for somebody just to go off script on that one. Wouldn't you love just be like, I really haven't thought this over very much, but. I'm going to rash judgment. A rush to judgment here. I'm leaving my options open. But as for today, I'm definitely not going to be not running for president. Today I'm going to the bar. Also, nothing I do today counts for my presidential campaign.

Speaking of people who are looking for Elaine, former vice president Mike Pence, I want you to listen to his reception at the Leadership Summit of the National Rifle Association. Well, hello, I love you too. And welcome back to the Hoosier State. I was going to ask you, David, what a presidential candidate should do when they get booed at a conservative function. But I'm also interested in how Mike Pence's entrance music is Kid Rock's Born Free. should we do entrance music power rankings sometime soon?

I would love to. Or just don't, let's not talk about it for a couple months and try to just match the candidate to the walkout music. I think it's going to be really hard with Republicans. Because it's all kid rock right now. If I gave you kid rock, you'd be like, uh, all of them. Except Trump,

Trump's the one that always just randomly walks out to just like a, like a disco classic or something for no reason. Yeah. Was it YMCA in his thing too? YMCA was a big one, yeah. He had all the hits of the 70s, 80s and today. That was amazing. Number three news item here, David,

much more important than Mike Pence getting booed, is a bunch of Republicans not being able to answer questions about abortion. That was big all week. Listen to CBS's Caitlin Huey Burns, tried to get a straight answer from another guy test driving a presidential campaign. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. As president, if you were president, would you advocate for federal limits? Yeah. So once again, I'm 100% pro-life. And I do believe that, and that's not what I said.

I do believe that we should have a robust conversation about what's happening on a very important topic. Robust conversation, another great political phrase. There is a professional wrestler who will remain nameless, but he's one of the greats of our entire topic. lives who I every time every time I he's interviewed says and again to start every sentence and it has no correlation to whether or not something has been previously stated it's just a tick I love I love that we saw the same thing here and again but I like in politics it has a sort of weight to it because it makes it's trying to imply one that you've already answered the question right yes I've already been we've already

been through this but two they're sort of in the middle of things oh you took that out of context, right? You know, like this is not, that was, you know, even if it's the way you begin a statement, um, this was something that we saw over and over and over again. It's, uh, Tim Scott, by the way, talk about somebody who I thought was a dupe. And now who I weirdly think might be, I mean, he might be running for vice president, but it certainly is weirdly like the most compelling candidate who I see clips of ever on the Republican side that's not named Donald Trump.

He just has like a certain something about him, which I was constantly shocked to see. This was not, this clip did not wrap him in glory in any sort of certain way, although it did, I don't think he's, I mean, I'm not here to defend Tim Scott. Every Republican is tripping over themselves this week because they finally got what they wanted

or what they've, you know, what they've been semi-seriously pushing for for the past 20 years. And now that's going to lose them the election, presumably, or potentially, you know? I mean, I think they're all looking at numbers. You listen, nobody says, I'm 100% pro-life, but nobody throws,

nobody gets to but without saying polling that is really conclusive, right? The big one was Ron DeSantis, signing that bill in Florida banning most abortions after six weeks. Yeah. And it was announced at 11 p.m. Mm-hmm.

Despite the bill being signed much earlier. Yeah. Like, let's find a way to just bury this. Mm-hmm. but we saw all those guys I mean even like the the rightiest of the right wing online voices slash trolls was coming was going you know went bonkers online after Wisconsin you know just like it's all over for us style you know I mean and why would that be your readout you know why would that be the immediate takeaway especially when your job is is is to be part of the PR is you know is just the hype machine right like why like why like why I get so down? Nobody wanted to win elections anyway. None of this was ever serious to some extent.

But now it does seem, it does seem like there's a lot of doom saying going on. That, whether or not you consider that a, a positive thing for all they had, for all that like, for everything that we've had to give up, women have had to give up to get to this point.

They'll be to lose to get to this point. Well, that's, that's a really tenuous argument. But it does seem like all that is finally, stacking up. Finally, the Republican Party has become the party. It's played to play that being to its base for the past 20, 30, 40 years. And it turns out that that's not a winning party. It's not a, that's not a winning platform. I noted this tweet from Caitlin Huey Burns, who was interviewing

Tim Scott there. She says, I've covered abortion policy and politics extensively. I don't inject any personal opinion. But I also think context helps when understanding gestational limit laws. I'm on my second pregnancy right now, and I wasn't even allowed to be seen by my OBGYN until I was eight weeks. Whoa. Last thing for you, David, today. How to sound smart about the Fox News Dominion voting system trial. Trial starts this week. It was delayed until Tuesday.

Did you see any of the pictures of the media writers lined up outside the Delaware courtroom this morning? No, I've not seen any of the pictures today. These are the, I love media writers, first of all. And there's very rarely like a media writer professional event. I was talking to Andrew Marchand about this in the Super Bowl because we were at the same party. It was like, we never, nobody ever gets to see each other. Yeah. Not a press box for the media writer per se.

So all these people are outside the courtroom. And it's so funny because these are the people who would criticize CNN for showing Trump's car pulling up to the Manhattan courtroom. And they were all taking pictures and tweeting them like, here is the line. Thanks guys. Turns out some interest in Fox News going on trial. That's great. If you want a full briefing on this, NPR's David Fulkenflake came on the pod last

week and had the great 30 minutes answer every question, right? Love David Fulkenflink. Here is the two-minute version of that. Two points I think you can make that I learned in real time from him that I thought were especially interesting about this. Point one. And this is worth just stating. out right. Fox News is not going to go out of business as a result of this trial.

Even if the maximum penalty that Dominion has asked for, which is what was it, $1.8 billion, $1.7 billion. Yeah, that sounds like that. Fox had $3 billion in cash as of February, according to the Wall Street Journal. Fox editorially is not going to change much at all except carving out

the possibly defamatory material from its newscasts or its opinion telecasts they are still just going to treat Joe Biden

like they've ever treated them and treat anything like they've ever treated I read some pieces and there's some nut graphs that had doomy words like existential moment

for Fox News or whatever it was. You got to show me what they're that means. Well, okay, so the argument for the existential moment is like, is, is set opposite the idea of actual ramifications, right? They're not going to go out of business. So is, so instead, is this an existential crisis wherein the people at the top, Rupert Murdoch, his son has to stare down the potential that lying is going to be painful? It is going to,

is going to present a problem moving forward. Yes. And I think there's definitely like, a how do we stop this from happening again because we don't want to get dragged into court. I would just submit that like non defamatory Fox programming. Oh yeah. And this, if you're a normal viewer, are you really going to be able to understand the difference between those things if Tucker Carlson's just on there being like January 6th, kind of overrated by the media. That's nobody's going to trial for that.

You're right. No, exactly right. That's still happening. If they had a, if, you know, all of the Fox brain trust got into a time machine and went back to election night, let's hope it's not a Dominion time machine because that would presumably send them to someplace, but they didn't intend on going and lock them in a shelf. Yeah. If they got into a time machine and had to do it all over again, the result would not be, yes, the election was fair. I hope all, everyone watching this, watching this network understands that. No, they would just find another boogeyman, probably something that would not get them in legal,

trouble. Yes. Yes. They would just do a different version that wouldn't land them in court. Yeah. Which is already the vast majority of Fox programming. I mean, Dominion for what, I think that the problem with Dominion, even in terms of as an entertainment tool, is that it was sort of weirdly too specific. It was too conspiracy theory. It was too tangible. They just need a buzzword. Not to mention wrong. No, yeah. That's why I think that the reason that they're getting pseudo, it is the same reason why I think it was actually bad propaganda. I don't mean to tell them what to do better, but it's much easier just to sort of, I don't think, I frankly think the Sorrow stuff is sort of empty outside of the anti,

the anti-Semitic angle. I mean, it's just like it's, things are more than a buzzword. And as soon as you get people Googling stuff online to like, and trying to figure out what you're talking about and as soon as people learn the conspiracy theory, you sort of lost as in, I'm giving them, I'm helping them too much. I think by giving them credit. But anyway. Point number two here for you, let's jump in that time machine and go back to election night.

All right. Because I think one thing Fulkinflick said that's so fascinating to me is the first domino that falls here that winds up with Fox, potentially in a Delaware courtroom this week, during some last minute settlement, is the fact that Fox called or the decision desk called Arizona for Joe Biden on election night. Oh, yeah. They're the first election, the first news organization to do that. that basically meant Biden was going to win the election. He believed he had won Arizona, and of course he would eventually won Arizona. There is a statistically based controversy about that call, which is above my pay grade, and I believe your pay grade too.

But what happened was when Fox called Arizona for Biden, it pissed off Trump and his allies. When Trump spent the next couple weeks trying to steal the election, that call became a data point about how Fox was insufficiently loyal to Trump. We saw in those emails and messages that came out as part of this trial that Fox executives panicked in that moment. And then those conspiracy theories started getting airtime on Fox News. Yeah, because if they, right, if they hadn't made that call, then the legitimacy of the Arizona race could have been the entire story, right?

Then you, or you could, you could, you could, someone talking about Pennsylvania. it becomes a matter of counting electoral votes and not a matter of the votes that we've already deemed counted or somehow counterfeit. That's when you have to start looking into the conspiracy theory. It's just fascinating to me that it all goes back to that. And again, maybe, as you say, maybe there's a, maybe that is like a direct link or maybe there's a version of that where they don't call Arizona and the same thing winds up happening because there's this enormous pressure from Trump and his allies to say,

must support me right now. But when you understand that fact, the whole story just gets that much more interesting. Yeah, but that's just, I mean, that's why the whole story is interesting is the, is the tension that is presented by this quote-unquote news organization that also wants to be a disinformation organization, like whatever. Like, you, like, if they would be better off not keeping up the pretense of being some, of being pure news in any in any in any in any former fashion and then they wouldn't have the problem of pure news accidentally messing up the rest of the show right i mean it's like you don't like

it's it's it's so it's such a funny have your cake and eat it sort of thing like like they put themselves in a situation by lying all the time yes but more but frankly and more significantly by trying to be by pretending by keeping up this facade of of legitimacy If they hadn't been messing with the legitimacy, they would have never been in this problem. Never had this problem. Why are you funding your election desk? Why are you paying for algorithms?

Why? All you care about is the way that your host react. Speaking of a feature whose legitimacy is never questioned, it's time for David Chewmaker guess is the strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about John Rom's victory at the Masters was there's ROM at the top.

We got votes for green rom, like green jacket and top rom as in. Yeah, I like that. Top rom. And noodles, thanks to Molly Warren. Today's headline comes from Michael G. and Palmer Eldridge. It's from Slate, David, my old home. Slate was writing about those revelations in ProPublica. The Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas not only took some trips with Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, but that Crow bought properties

co-owned by Thomas. How are we not talking about this more? This news is dropping on weird days, but yes, go on. Obviously, it's a scandal when you have a financial relationship with somebody like Crow whose interest could potentially be

before the court. Let that seep into your head and answer. What was Slate's strain pun headline? I would just like to say before I get into it, that there's, that Supreme Court justice, being a Supreme Court justice has a lot of things going for it. Dodging journalists, dodging questions from journalists is maybe one of the top things. Like, is there any, there's absolutely no obligation nor real, like, no one's really wondering why he's not talking more. You get to live in a totally, like, enclosed

world. Well, you get to live on when a Harlan Crow's yachts, too. But no one's like, no one's like, you know, he has to, he's like, he must be answered these questions. He must like, no, he's a Supreme Court justice. It's like better than being king or queen. Is the obstacle here

the lack of a hallway like we have in Congress? No, I think it's a lack of a precedent. I don't know what it would look like for a Supreme Court justice to be answering questions. No. Would they be on the stand? Would they be in a

hallway? I don't know. Would they be on a podium somewhere? They give interviews from time to time. No, but that's, that's different. I mean, you know what the 60 minutes interview or whatever with like RBG looks like, but that's not. That's a different thing. I don't say, I think it's the hallway. Mitch McConnell's in the news. We chase Mitch McConnell until he gets to his office. But we don't even know where they take the robes off. Like, we don't know what that. Yeah, you can't picture it. That's why it's so difficult. Anyway, uh, okay, sorry. So the problem is that you're, friendly with crow. Mm-hmm. Too friendly with crow.

Too friendly. Perhaps entangled with crow. Crow's feet, crow's nest, crows, crow, crow you don't want people

to intimate that if crow gave something to you, you would be forced to give something back. Quid pro, quid pro, crow.

Quid pro crow. That's great. No one can say that, but yes, That's amazing. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantus.

I am back later in the week with Pressbox's final edition. And then on Monday, Shoemaker and I return on the official podcast of the newsroom. More lukewarm takes about the beat. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.