The Press Box - Perry Bacon Jr. on the Midterm Countdown, Twitter Under Elon Musk, and How to Save Local News

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Bryan is joined by Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. to discuss the upcoming midterm elections as well as recent media news. They begin by addressing the unified story represented by these elections, discuss which senate race has been of peak interest, and weigh in on whether the democrats are “screwing this up.” Later, they touch on how Twitter may or may not change under the ownership of Elon Musk, and then Bacon shares his three-step plan to save local news. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Perry Bacon Jr. Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The time has come to get ready for the 2022 World Cup. And what better way to prepare than by revisiting the World Cup's most amazing goals? I'm Brian Phillips. I'm making a podcast about the history of the men's World Cup, told through the stories of 22 iconic goals. The show's called 22 Goals. It's out now on the Ringer Podcast Network, and we're having so much fun. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox's final edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes.

Our guest today is a guy who's writing I have read and admired for a really long time, but outside of a couple of emails had never met until just now. He is Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. Perry, welcome to the press box. Hey, Brian, thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of you and your work, so I'm really happy to be here. A few questions about your career before we dive into midterm talk. you worked at 538, you worked at MSNBC,

what does having a column in the Washington Post offer you that's different from those jobs? I'm laughing because whenever I, when I'm ever on a plane or somewhere and I bump into like a person who's under 35, let's say, they'll usually say to me, oh, I recognize you, you were on the 538 podcast. I love when you were on that.

I know you're at the Post now. I don't really read the Washington Post, though. They'll sort of say this, and I'm sort of like, you're not supposed to say that. But this is my first role where I've been, I was a TV commentator, but I was, you know, hired as sort of a nonpartisan, non- ideological role. And I worked at 538, and our goal was to be pretty non-ideological there, too. So this is the first job where I've been able to sort of let my opinions rip in a real way and be critical of, you know, I'm more on the left, so I'm critical, but I'm also critical

of Democrats at times, too. And so I've had, that's been the free part is you can really, and also you can sort of get up in the morning and pretty much choose, I want to write about local news in Louisville today, and I can do that versus waiting for some kind of quote unquote news peg. So that's been the fun part too. You have a lot of freedom, not just in terms of opinions,

but in terms of choosing the topics. That's what's so cool about having a column like yours when so much of journalism both on TV and online is based on a thing happen. And I'm going to deliver a take about the thing within 30 minutes or an hour. But you can actually lead people to a topic that you think is important.

And I think we are, there was a period maybe in 2010, let's say, where we only really had two takes, whatever the New York Times said, whatever the Washington Post said. Now we have whatever everyone on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et cetera said, we have substacts and we have,

we even have more opinion writing within. So I feel like we're a, and most people's takes are on what happened yesterday or what happened the day before. So in some ways, like, the lane on some levels to sort of have a take about something that is not already part of the taketocracy. Speaking of those millennials who are doing nothing but listening to podcasts, how do you get people's attention with a newspaper column in 2022?

Let me know. But I think, you know, we're doing, the post is doing well and bringing people in. But I think it's often been when I write about something that was, when I was something that's offbeat. I wrote a piece when I first got the column being like, there's this critique of, you know, this idea that we're all living in bubbles. And I live in Louisville, Kentucky, so it's not a, you know, it's not a super democratic area. But Hillary Clinton and Biden won here.

And I looked in the New York Times of this feature where you can go look at your neighborhood's data. And I looked at my neighborhood. And my neighborhood is like 90-10 Biden voters. And so I wrote a piece being like, I live in a bubble and I'm fine with it. And I said something to the effect of, I think my neighbors are good people. We all voted for Joe Biden. We all took the vaccine. I'm not, you know, we, I think we're good people.

I'm not too apologetic about that. And that one sort of caught on with a lot of people, you know, I had friends from college read that. People from all over really read that one. I think it sort of resonated, you know, obviously I think diversity in all kinds and ideological diversity is important. I don't, you know, there are some Republicans who live on my street who I see and we talk about things. I think it's important. I think they're not really like Trumpy Republicans, to be totally honest, but I think that I respect other people's political views.

I just don't necessarily think that you have to feel bad if you don't live in. But anyway, this piece got, did get outside. I think if you pick something that's not about Biden, Pelosi, or Trump, then it tends to bring in sort of other audiences versus the post-core audiences, my senses, is very invested in sort of the politics of today. Bubble or not, does living in Kentucky lead you to write different columns than you'd write if you lived in Washington, D.C.? Absolutely.

Like I wrote a piece of a few weeks ago that we're going to get to, I think, about kind of, so I, you know, I grew up in Louisville, worked at the Courier Journal, the paper here. And so I spent a lot of time with the journalists, you know, in town. We have like a meeting every Tuesday, in fact, where we sort of have a happy hour. So I go to that, and it's,

and the, the journalist at the Courage Journal recently formed a union because the big owner of the paper there, the sort of corporation called Gannette that owns the papers that all had all these cuts. And they were sort of talking about, and that sort of came up in a way that I don't think would have come up if I was in Washington. The bubble piece, I think it's different to be in a liberal area of a pretty contested state. Like, you know, like the, I write about the sort of critical race theory or whatever,

the sort of bans on talking about race or whatever there's the passing in Red State some. Or abortion. This is happening where I live. So these are not like real life conversation. You know, these are not fictional things that are going on. Whereas you live in New York City, they're probably not going to ban abortion in New York City. So, you know, my wife and I were talking about, like, you know, we both went to public school. But if the schools get to the point where they ban sort of honest discussion of racial issues,

that would make me think about private school in a certain way. If our kid can actually learn about the world in the broader way, then I would. And that's the kind of thing that I think happens if you're in a, we're in a blue city. Also, you know, we were the place here where, um, Brianna Taylor was shot by the police. That was a big national story. And you had sort of three blocks of people here. You had Republicans who were concerned about her killing, but also wanted or also generally

climbed to defend the police. We had sort of a defund the police group. And then we had sort of people in the middle who were sort of sorting out. This was a tragic that happened. And I think we have a more diverse political structure than in D.C. Where they're at least D.C. proper in city to city, there basically are no Republicans. Let's talk about the midterms. We're 11 days out, that strange period where every day brings nine different polls that go

across Twitter and drive everybody completely insane. And then the story today about Nancy Pelosi's husband being attacked in an apparent home invasion in San Francisco. Is there a unified story of the midterms right now? I think there is. I mean, you know, I worked at 538, so I tend to think these look at these polling averages and think about it. So I think the unified story is we all.

all expect that, and I think everybody reading this stuff thinks writing these pieces thinks Republicans will win the House and the Senate is a jump ball. And so I think it's useful as, and even though the polls shift and so on, so I think if, and so I think the question that is in bid on a lot of this coverage is, are we going to be in a wave election like 94 or 2006 or 2014 or 2018, where the president's party gets blown out? and people in that party who we thought were safe end up losing. I think that's what the undercurrent is or is something different now. So that's one angle.

That's the sort of you've covered politics a long time. You think that's what's happening. The other angle is this, we have no idea what's going on. The polls are constantly wrong. We're constantly wrong about everything. Just wait till it happens. And that's kind of how I've gotten to the point of like, I read the models and the models say this could be a red wave,

but just wait. And what is the point of, if you're Nate Silver, predicting is what you should do or like doing a prognosication or doing a forecast, as he would say. But everybody else, we're not invested in necessarily

our prognostication skills, and maybe we should sort of dial it back a little bit. It really reminds me of the week before the Super Bowl where readers have one question, which is who's going to win? And we don't know the answer to that question. Yes. But it is our, in our, our incentive is to invest everything that happens between now and the Super Bowl or now in election day with meaning because there are clicks to be had there.

There's content to be had there. People are on edge. And then that drives us to do very weird things journalistically. You agree with that? And just doing almost too many of them too. Just most people already knew who they were voting for months ago because they're in one of the. two parties. The rest of them are probably deciding on things that already happened. There are very few people that switch their vote in the last 10 days, and we have no idea why. Like, we just,

this the, if you're a swing voter waiting until the six days before the election, you're sort of weird. Let's just not pretend to you. Like, you know, it's not that you're a bad person, but it is like we've had two years for you to consider this thing between parties that have become incredibly divergent. What are you, what's going on with you? Like, if you actually talk to swing voters this interesting because they often don't follow politics closely and have some of them do, but often have views that are sort of contradictory that, or like they don't fit. Like they want to legalize marijuana, but they want to build the wall too, that kind of thing, where it's like, you know, their views are, or they're not, not, they're not inconsistent.

They're just like not in the sort of paradigm we think of everyone having their views in. Which Senate race is interested in you the most? You know, I think what's happening in Pennsylvania is really interesting, where, um, You know, I understand in a health sense, people have strokes. He's going to recover. He will, you know, he's, he will probably be speaking again a different way. We should respect that we should not be ableist or we should not be critical of him for recovering. On the other hand, I am curious as a political observer, how does, how do voters take that in? Like, and how do they, you know, we, maybe we want people to not punish. head of Federman for his health, but they might do so anyway. So I am watching that. In the same way, like Raphael Warnock is an upstanding person who is the pastor of the church. Martin Luther King once ran is running against Herschel Walker, who has a lot of scandals. It doesn't know, hasn't run for it, but it's a very close race.

And I think that goes to the fact that how strong partisanship is. And on some level, how Hersch Walker seems to be maybe not intellectually smart, but I get the sense, and I shouldn't say, I don't mean to say he's done. I'm just saying he may not be a policy expert. He seems pretty savvy to me, and that's always what I'm interested in. I think we sort of overlay sort of do you know a lot about like foreign policy with, are you a good candidate? And those are very, very different things, as President John Kerry could tell you. And so those are the two that I'm looking at probably a lot.

The North Carolina race is interesting because it's a state that could become these, you know, the sort of demographics of that state, being. educated urban areas, high minority population. North Carolina is a state that should become Democratic, but it never is. And so I'm sort of watching to see that. Those are probably my three. The candidates there are not as interesting, but I'm trying to watch that as a state just looking forward to where it's headed.

Speaking of Georgia, Stacey Abrams is running for governor for the second time, not to be poll person, but the polls have her running behind Brian Kemp, the Republican. How do you look back at Abrams's career with the two gubernatorial races and then back to her time in the Georgia House of Representatives? So it looks like from what I see is Stacey Abrams is right about something, but it hasn't helped her. I think her general view that the Georgia is a state Democrats can compete in was correct. Like she was pushing the Democrats in 2020. You got to try to win this state and sort of banging the drum, and that was smart.

And her view of had to win it, which is like not necessarily to sort of move to the right, but to try to figure out, there's all these people moving to Atlanta, of all races, you know, young white people, Asians, black people, of course, and sort of maximize those people. I think those two insights, I think, were probably smart. She helped recruit Raphael Warnock.

So I think that she helped them win the state. That said, I think she's going to end up having, you can be right about something and it did not necessarily benefit you. And I get the sense that in 2018, she helped get the state closer, but it isn't win. And this time, I think it's worth considering. that in, I think what I end up with a lot of races where when there was a challenge, when there

was two people who were, two people running, and there was no incumbent, the Republican one, but in a lot of places I think we're going to see the incumbent one, because all the evidence is that you get a two to three point advantage from being an incumbent meeting that you are the sitting governor or the sitting senator. And I think we're going to look at a lot of these closer races and be like, okay, that incumbency thing we need to start thinking about more because I think that's really, because Kemp and Warnock are the incumbents, and I think that's a very relevant point. Factor here. Whenever I read your Washington Post chats, you do with readers, Democratic leaning readers,

as they are want to do online. Democrats say this all the time online is the Democrats are screwing this up. This is a take, right? The election would be different if the Democrats weren't screwing this up. Do you think the Democrats are screwing this up? I don't in general. And I guess the thing I keep coming back to is we've had in the 20 midterm elections since 1942, the party in control of the presidency has lost the house in 18 of them.

So on some level, one of my old colleagues, Nathaniel Rakesh, great writer, 538, tweeted on November 6th, 2020, November 6th, 2020, no data on inflation. anything, congratulations to the Republicans for winning the midterms in 2022. Like, very F. Biden had been declared the winner that day. And it was like, and the rule that the other party wins the midterms is one of the sort of laws of politics on some level. We don't really know exactly why that happens.

We think it's because the voters kind of want to balance out the parties. But that's kind of, are the Democrats doing everything optimally? No. But I don't know what scenario looks like. The last time of the president's party won the midterms was 2002, which was like right after 9-11, Bush is getting treated like sort of a unifying figure. His approval ratings are really high. It really takes something probably unique to get the incumbent party to win.

I'm not saying the Democrats are blamens. I'm just saying that rule is pretty strong. What's interesting is after that prescient tweet, we did have something fairly unique happen in American life, which is Donald Trump tried to steal the election. rioters descended on the U.S. Capitol, Republicans' party, broadly speaking, did not reckon with that event, but tried to either shrug it off or install more helpful secretaries of state in various states around the country. And then what we're about to find out, we think, is that this iron law of politics still applies. So if the, yes, no, I agree.

If the Democrats win the election, I think you would probably conclude that, oh, January 6th and maybe the Dobbs ruling, broke this rule. And I think some of the, you know, there's these people who do these economic, do these models of elections where they say, if you look at the president's approval in the economy, and these models suggest Democrats should lose about 40 House seats. And it looks like they may only lose 20. So it actually may be a complicated story where the Democrats lost the midterms, as expected, but lost by less because some voters did recognize this Republican Party.

party is a little bit extreme, just not enough. So I think there's a lot of things going on here at once. Again, I don't know the results yet. So I want to emphasize that the Democrats might win the House. But I'm looking at what I'm now is I think the law of politics is in practice, but also the Republicans probably have nominate. The Republicans would be favored in the Senate that they had not nominated Dr. Oz, Hershia Walker. If they had found whatever normal chamber of commerce person has been a House member for a long time, they would win 55 I have synesties is my guess. I would not blame anybody for being cynical about politics.

If you could tell him January 6th will happen. Just putting them inside Dobbs for a second. January 6th will happen. But then there are these immutable laws of politics that will kick in. And it's just going to happen. And I would say if I were a young person involved in politics, whatever, and I would be like, wait, what? And I wouldn't blame them for being cynical.

I'm probably cynical. I'm not. I think cynical. Cynical is a word. I got a, that's one word. I think we are really ideologically. I know this is not a political podcast, so I'm being careful here, but we are really divided ideologically. And I think for a lot of Republican voters, no, they didn't like January 6th. Of course they think Trump laws. I think there's a, but are they going to, they have Republican policy views. The parties are really different. They don't think student loans should be forgiven. They don't want to have. trillions of dollars spent for economic poverty or climate change mitigation. And I may think, of course, you should just vote Republican a few times, just vote for Democrats because they are on the right side of democracy. They respect the laws. And they might say, well, this Republican I'm voting for this year did not participate in January 6th. And I'm a Republican and I'm a conservative. And I respect that. And I think that's part of it is like really that it's not, it's

how divided we are politically. I started covering politics in 2004. I'm not saying it wasn't divisive, but I don't think people were, particularly Republicans, were scared to tell people who they voted for. Versus I think now if you're a Trump voter in certain communities,

you don't want to say, I think this is a problem with the polls. I'm thinking you don't necessarily want to say, I'm a Trump, Billy, if you're college educated and a sort of a white college job, you know, I don't think you want to say I'm a Republican, I'm a Trump voter. But I think they still feel that way.

And I think it is, I don't know how you, I'm not saying it's good to be a Trump voter. I'm just saying this is where we are. And this kind of division is unhealthy. I'm not trying to be a both sides. I'm just saying this is not a great situation we're in now. Regardless of what happens in the House, are you in favor of the Democrats rebooting their leadership there, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn? I am aggressively against that, aggressively against that. And I, so I wrote a piece, you know, in June and July saying,

I've been covering politics 20 years. I've never covered a Democratic House leadership not led by Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and James Clyburn. That just seems, you know, insane, particularly since their record, it's not like they've won every election. The Democrats have had a, you know, I think they've lost more House elections than they've won under those, under the trio. And so I just don't think you get, how many people get a 20-year tenure in charge? of anything in America, particularly if their record is, like Bill Belichick should get a 20-year tenure. Look at his record. But I mean, and he's won the Super Bowl maybe, what, six times, but that's against 30, that's against 30 teams. Pelosi's only facing one other team and she

constantly loses to it. So I don't think it's an age problem. To me, it's like a, I just don't, you know, even when you see them interviewed, I don't think politics is changing and I'm not sure they are updating their views or their methods. Like, I think Senator Warren is not necessarily that much younger than they are, but she's Bernie Sanders, all of them they are. I just think that, you know, I'm more left wing. I wouldn't deny that. But it's also, I think that they are, but I just think who's in touch with movements, who's in touch with how politics is changing? That trio is not. And I would, I'm not sure that Joe Biden should run either. I really think if you said to me, I don't want to go through another year like 2019 where there's

97 debates and I have to watch them all. That was horrible. But, but if you could get like Buttigieg or Cory Booker or Klobuchar or Wittmer and just skip the debates or have a, if there was a small field, not Andrew, not everybody in their mother running president, a small field of like younger folks, I think they might end up with a better person. Like, I respect Joe Biden, but I don't think he's been fantastic. And again, I think it's been a hard time, but I think a younger person might help. And a person a little less state in their ways might help. And I guess he's going to be like 86.

at the end of 20, you know, 2028, that is getting up there. I don't think this, I don't think it's ages to say. And an 85 year old may not be the best person for such a complicated country. Let me ask you about Twitter, which you wrote about the other day. Last night, Elon Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter and then celebrated by firing a bunch of top executives. What did you like about Twitter pre-Elon? So, two things. The main thing. The main thing, the main thing, thing is that if you, you know, if you don't work at the New York Times, the Ringer, the New York Times is different than the Ringer, obviously. But I mean, the New York Times, the Post, the traditional news outlets, but even the newer ones like 538, where I worked, Vox, the Ringer, these are all

great things. But there are plenty of smart people in America, in the world, who don't have a news media job. And to me, academics, activists, and to me, I find often that Twitter helps me who is the expert or who's the smartest person or the person with a counterintuitive view on issue X or Y and who isn't writing in a big outlet. And it's been the easiest way for me to find those people and it's really sort of expanded my universe of knowledge. I think that's how I found it about like Nate Duncan and now listen to his basketball podcast and I'm smarter about basketball.

And so I just think that has been like, you know, to be blunt, I mean, Bill Simmons found some people for Grant Land and the ringer who I hadn't heard of. but in some ways, if you, but there's probably other, but if there were seven more grand, seven more of the ringers, there's a lot of talented people in the world who have a lot of smart things to say, and Twitter has expanded those for me. And to me, I know there's like,

and also Black Lives Matter started on Twitter. I mean, that's, or not necessarily, but happened. I think particularly where people whose views don't conform to establishment, I'll say white on some level occasionally, centrist. I think people whose views are kind of weird or outsidery, but are smart. Arnes aren't probably going to get jobs at the post. We have diverse columnists.

Let me put it that way. But we may not. But I think that outsider voices can be heard. And I find that to be super important. So I hope that he understands that as a virtue. Is Twitter two left? I don't know. I think it depends on who you follow.

Like there are plenty of Republicans on Twitter. I don't think that the band stuff, like I don't think I'm opposed to inciting violence. I'm also opposed to silencing political views. So I'm going to say something. I sort of hope Trump comes back, not because I know that I don't agree with Trump or pretty much anything, but I don't like the idea that the leader of the movement in the country is not, he should not incite violence on Twitter. But as long as he's just giving his views and his views are not ones I like, and some of the things he says can fall into a racist category, but I think that we should hear those views and debate them on some level.

Maybe I'm thinking about this, but I'm not, I agree with Elon Musk's idea that we don't want to silence people, but I don't know how that's going to be implemented. Even if the views are, the election was stolen from me over and over again, subversion of democracy. Does that fall into the- So that's the part that I think, I'm just weighing this, like, is misinformation. I think if you say the vaccines don't cause you to die, that would be a place where I would be like banned that. The election was stolen from a regular person. I probably, that's like almost a political view of sorts.

The election was stolen by the sitting president is probably more like misinformation. I've got to think about this a little bit. I am not sure. And I, you know, it's like a hard, I, you know, I do like Twitter, unfortunately as a private company but has become something of a public space, Facebook too. And so if we should not have privatized the public square, but I don't want to ban too many people from the public square. I've already seen people saying they're going to leave Twitter if Musk fully turns it into whatever vision he has of it, which my old colleague, Jay Kang, compared to people threatening

to move to Canada if Donald Trump was reelected. Are you have any plans to leave Twitter? No, I don't have any plans to leave Twitter. And I hope people stay. I mean, yeah, I mean, obviously if it becomes like a haven of bots and people threatening people's lives and that kind of thing, I don't know what it's going to be. I don't know much about Elon must, to be honest with you, but I'm probably not going to leave. I find Twitter super useful. I'm on the high end of users. I think it's improved my knowledge of the world.

If I go off of it, I will look for some alternative. I'm like, you know, I might like Twitter more than its owner does at this point. We talk a lot about local news here on the press box. And earlier this month, you floated a plan, admittedly a pie in the sky plan, but it's a plan. What is your plan for helping save local news? So, well, okay, so the place really pie in the sky in that I suggested that we should put $10 billion in local news. I, of course, left out the part of whose money would that come from. But who's, so that was a big detail.

I actually think there is some idea that you could like, a lot of countries are, you know, my plan called for like $10 billion, which is like a lot of money, but it's only like $30 a person. So one thing I am more open to, other countries have a fair amount, like much higher levels of per capita public giving to media than $30. So I think one version of that would be public financing of media, the way we fund like off a lot of scientific research, for example. I understand why you, you know, I don't run Ron DeSantis, you know, editing my stories either. But I think there is something to be said for if you can make it a public service. And the other way to think about this is, rather than thinking about this big national way, to think about every individual community, do you have the money there in some communities like where you have a couple? There's not a Jeff Bezos in every community, but there probably is someone who has a lot of money who can maybe help support a number.

news site or ideally, like most cities, major cities have a NPR affiliate that is taxpayer funded. So it's not that far from that. So that was kind of the big idea. But the big idea, what I was more focused on was sort of some principles for this journalism itself. And I had like five of them that you should have news in every community, meaning that we should, right now news is becoming a thing you have in urban areas and not in rural or ex-urban ones. all news, you know, every city should have some amount of like multi-platform news, meaning that, in-depth news, meaning that you should have a police beat reporter in every community.

Whether they do their stories via tweet, Instagram, TikTok, or article, I don't care, but somebody should cover the core beats in every community. So that's a second. The third was non-profit because I think local news is not going to make money anymore. Another idea I had, this is sort of a more of the fourth idea I had was it should be free. And I know that's a controversial idea, but I think we need local news, people to reach people. And I think a big problem with our current environment is most of the in-depth news, including where I work at, is behind a paywall. You should go to a college campus and ask kids about paywalls. They're like, what are you talking about? So that's a big problem.

And the fifth thing that I said was we need to have more local. news with a point of view. And what I suggested was essentially having kind of every community have sort of a New York Times, NPR-ish, trying to reach everybody kind of news outlet. I know that they're a debate about whether those are left or whatever. And then have an outlet that is maybe more that has sort of like pro-LGB, pro-racial equality, sort of a more left-wingish thing. And then having more capitalism is good, you know, religion is good. I'm not. not saying these views are all in one party, but having more sort of a right wing, when two and everything.

Because I think that we are learning that people like news that, like, does a nightly experiment and Fox News and MSNBC suggest that they get more audience than CNN, which tells me people want news from a perspective that they already align with, and maybe we should sort of respect them a certain way. And this is in every congressional district in America. It's going to have, under this, under the Perry Bacon plan, it's going to have a newspaper-like object that's going to cover all these beats, whether it's actually an article form or not. Yeah, right.

And it's going to have a national review like object and that's going to have an American prospect, essentially. That's essentially, yeah, well put. Yes, exactly. Okay. So there was three things. Three things. So I said, so the idea would be the, the big one would be trying to reach everybody and

it would have 100 people. And that means TikTokers, journalists, whatever, 100 people, one of them. And then 50 at the other two, the left wing and the, the national review. And the, because I think the, the, the, the 100 person is trying to reach all the people. needs to be bigger. So that was the kind of in every congressional district. So that so that was in any way you added up I think you added up to like 200 journalists 435 districts you end up at a lot of money very quickly. So yeah, that was a very big complaint. Yeah. All right. Last one for you Perry. We're doing a media movie countdown here on the press box. Recent old, new everything,

favorite media movies. Do you have a nominee for a list? So I'm going to give two. So the first is, and this will be made fun of, I think. I'm a cheesy, idealistic person. And the first few episodes of The Newsroom, the HBO Aaron Sorkin Show, which get worse as it went on, but the first few episodes are very pure. Here's what journalism's function in the world can be.

It can be a force of good. There's real debates about that. I sometimes go back and watch the first episode to sort of review, what am I doing this for? Why is this important? and what can we do? So the newsroom is one. And then, because I was working in TV news at the time,

there was a show called Being Mary Jane, in which Gabrielle Union plays a cable news journalist. This was a show 2015 to 2019 or so. And that one I thought was good in that it often captured, like, the real elements of what's going on in news media, and TV news media, which is like people elbowing, to even their friends to be on TV more. TV is very zero-sum.

The basic view being if this person succeeds and I'm failing because the TV slots are very limited. The newspaper has thousands of employees often. But the TV, they're only going to put on a certain number of people and it's very, you know, friends one day are enemies the next. And I think that show really, I mean, that show was realistic enough to where I stopped watching it in part because that happened to work and I did not enjoy it when it happened to work.

And so that was, so that's probably more, you know, that's not more obscure, but that's like, that one was really good as well. Newsroom, though, is a more happy version of it. I'm so happy to hear your pro newsroom. There's no need for us to hide, you know. It's okay. When it was going off, I felt like I had to hide because if it came, certain shows have their problems. I get that. But I actually sort of, if you go back and watch West Wing, the politics are stupid, but the character.

character development and the idealism, I think we sort of need more of that in a certain way. There are a lot of people who think Alan Alda should be the Republican nominee for president. I mean, I went back and looked at that like Jimmy Smiths and Alba. That was a great election. It was actually interesting. It wasn't that different than McCain and Rom. I mean, McCain and Obama, right? It was very similar than in a certain way. And so that's kind of what I, what I think about the world, I just want to go back to Obama versus McCain. And I know we're never going back. That's all I. First, because McCain was so many, I'm left to center, obviously, but McCain was someone who, if they were the president,

I would have been pretty proud of and thought it was a great person. And so I don't, it's sort of hard to think that we're so far from that, but we are so far from that. All right, you can read Perry Bacon's column in the Washington Post. Perry, thanks so much for coming on the press box. Hey, Brian, thanks for having me. All right, it's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses the strain pun headline. Yeah.

Monday's headline. about Don Lemon's move from primetime to mornings on CNN was, now it's Dawn Lemon, B-A-W-N. Today's headline comes from the Sydney Morning Herald. It's a story about chess. A 19-year-old beat the reigning chess world champion, and there were some intimations of cheating. A 19-year-old has now filed a defamation suit.

But let's stick to the basic facts to hear, David. a 19-year-old involved in a high-stakes, somewhat controversial chess match. What was a Sydney morning herald's strained pun headline? Controversial chess match? This is like a checkmate? I mean, is there how many chess phrases?

King Jack. Remember, whenever you're at a loss, go to the last great pop culture thing. Oh, Queen's Gambit? Teens Gambit? A teen's gambit. Gambit. Yeah.

Teens Gambit. By the way, this was also a headline rule of three. The subhead was a chess cheating scandal, a sex toy, and Elon Musk. Dang. Now I want to read it. Way to go, headline rule of three. Yeah. The same one.

He is David Chewbaker out, Brian Curtis, production magic by Erica Servantes back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.