The Press Box - Pete Hegseth's Trial by TV, Why College Football Wasn't Ruined, and the Story That Inspired ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the show with reactions to some morning headlines, including the following: Suspect in the shooting of the insurance executive in NYC (1:12) Bashar al-Assad’s reign in Syria ends (6:44) Juan Soto signs with the New York Mets (8:41) Then they react to the news about Pete Hegseth and his mom (14:00) and discuss a plan for saving TV news (28:16). Later, in the Notebook, they discuss the following: College football’s first year with 12 playoff teams (36:33) The magazine article that inspired ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ (44:56) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, Only in Journalism, America’s Softest Target, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer Movies. If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at The Ringer, then you're in luck. Because every episode of The Rwatchables and The Big Picture, now on YouTube. Like Bill said, Ringer Movies will feature full episodes of my show, The Big Picture, the Rewatchables, as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history, and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie-loving Ringer personalities.

Search Ringer Movies on YouTube and Experience the Joy, Chris Ryan impersonating Wayne Jenkins on camera. Yes. I thought we'd start this year podcast with some morning headlines. Oh, it's a new look. Love it. We've been trying this on the Thursday podcast where we're calling it the Joel Inchalada. Yeah, love the name. I don't have a snappy, punterific name for you for this feature, but I've got three

headlines for you from this morning. Number one, have you been following the stories about the, suspect who shot and killed the insurance executive in New York City. Oh, yeah. Yes. That's kind of hard to miss. Just before we came on air today, it was reported that there is what is being described as a person of interest or maybe just a man being held for questioning who was

detained by police after a siting at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Hmm. I'm not making this up. The New York Times says the person of interest had a gun, a silencer, and false identification cards on him. The New York Post, Handle with Care, says he also had a manifesto. Not totally sure what the manifesto was about. But the Times seems you're reporting it's about health care. Well, maybe not surprisingly.

Okay. Criticizing health care companies law and, oh, sorry. Yeah, a manifesto criticizing health care companies. Yes. So the person who was murder was Brian Thompson of United Healthcare. And I got to say, I have been absolutely engrossed reading the details about the search for the suspect. We had the shell casings with the words deny and delay written on them. I 100% thought that was fake when I first saw it.

Didn't you think like maybe this could be something that was done to mislead the police when you first saw that? Yes, yes. Because it's almost too perfect and it's too much what everybody thinks it is. Then we got the picture or at least a partial picture of the suspect because he allegedly pulled down his mask to flirt with a woman who worked the hostel he was staying at. So he's masked up in the cab and in all these other news pictures. But he decides that, you know, I'm going to show my face this one time. Yeah. Which might be the way authorities found him.

And then they find, and they meaning the police, find a backpack full of monopoly money in Central Park. Suspect had fled there after the shooting. Not totally clear what message that sends that there was monopoly money in the backpack. And then he allegedly took a bus out of town, which is just a phrase that makes me think of decades that are very, very far from our own. and may have, we stress may have wound up in Altoona, Pennsylvania. I was thinking about this. What cultural object would these kind of details be at home in? What do you mean?

Like the bullet casings, the monopoly money? The bus out of town? I mean, it's not quite a cult novel, is it? It's a pulp novel that you think is trying a little bit too hard, right? Oh, we're just going to throw in some just totally off the wall clues. and then find a way to string them together loosely at the end. It's a, I mean,

it's not necessarily bad, right? This is like a middling novel by a, by a writer that you like a lot. It's just, you know, we're on deadline here. You know, we're going a little bit,

a little bit too much by the formula and not by the, the passion for the, for the form. But, yeah, I mean, this is a very bizarre story. Not just the crime,

but the reaction to the crime. It feels like a real moment, right? I mean, it feels like at the risk of getting too, you know, close your many over here, it feels like something is shifted just in the general reaction of this. I mean, obviously, this is a very specific genre that the victim existed in or whatever. But like, I mean, this is, I don't know what. Anger. Yeah. I don't know what the historical context. I mean, what the historical comp is here. If you want to go Bonnie and Clyde or Leopold and Loeb or like whatever, but just the sort of like determined, like, No one's denying the crime here, but there just seems to be an incredible outpouring of support for the cause, sort of, or for the whatever. I mean,

and to watch the news coverage of this has been a little bit jarring too, because they're covering the manhunt for this killer without, with like in deliberately almost like in denial of the fact that the, like, you know, news outlets, that would eagerly be like, you know, citing Twitter comments and stuff at just general, like public opinion polls about literally anything else are just pretending that there isn't this just kind of unusual outpouring of support for the murderer. It's hard for them to cover that kind of thing.

Yeah. And so it just seems like you can almost tell from the presentation that they're just, it feels like adjutop, not in the sense that they're not telling the truth, but in the sense that, like, you can read the expression on the newscaster's face that they know they're not telling the whole story sort of. They're leaving something on the table. It's all that's been incredibly weird to watch. So I will be interested to see if and when police have a suspect in the killing.

How that B story, that second story on social media changes, if at all. Because you're taking something that you're describing as generalized anger toward insurance companies and toward the health system in the United States. Then you're going to bring in, presumably at some point, a face to it. somebody else who will then become a character in the story. And that could change things in an interesting way. We'll come back and talk about this again. Headline number two for you from Syria.

Big news over the weekends that rebels took Damascus, ending the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who has fled to Russia, speaking of sentences out of a pulp novel. We saw over the weekend Western journalists entering Syria in mass for the first time since that Civil War started in 2011. And one journalist, David, that everybody has on their mind is Austin Tice. Yeah. Austin Tice is a Texan. He went to the University of Houston and Georgetown.

A lot of people try to become foreign correspondents by going to where the action is, and that's what Austin Tice did in Syria. He wrote stories, contributed to a number of news outlets, and then was taken captive in 2012. the thinking is he was taking captive by al-Assad's government. There was a hostage video released that year. Well, on Sunday, Joe Biden from the White House said, we believe he's alive referring to Austin Tice.

We think we can get him back. Biden also just said we have to identify where he is. Yeah. Just to add some context here, Austin Tice is 43 years old. He has spent almost a third of his life in captivity. in Syria. Evan Gershkovich,

but we talked about his detainment in Russia seemed cruelly and awful, awfully long. That was 16 months. This is 12 years. The Washington Post, to which Tice contributed, says he is believed to be the longest held

journalist, American journalist, that is, in history. I would love for this segment to be outdated as soon as you hear it because Austin Tice needs to come home. All right, finally, David, and I'll do my newscaster transition here. From the world of sports, Juan Soto has left the New York Yankees for the New York Mets.

Oh, God. His new contract runs 15 years and pays Soto $765 million. My favorite line. Wait, wait, wait, where's your unbiased journalist, or journalist approach to this? The tone of your voice was just betrayed so much, Brian. Well, it was a little Dr. Evil, I think, more than anything else. Because I'm not unhappy that he got $765 million so that any athlete gets that much money.

Just fund it. But like, we've all gotten to the point as sports writers where you put a big dollar figure in your mouth. Mm-hmm. And you're kind of exaggerating because like, oh, okay, $100 million, whatever it is. $765 million is a lot of money. Does this seem like a crazier amount of money than, A-Rod got when he signed with your Texas Rangers? That was 2000, 2001.

Yeah. It's hard to correct for era. I mean, that seemed bonkers 25 years ago. But 765 is just such a big number. 765 is, the context is obviously a lot different, but the context just in terms of media or just in terms of social media, the way that we interact with these things is I don't think anybody, I'm sure there must have been, but I don't remember there people in 2,000,

2001, whenever that was looking at the dollar figure and immediately saying that's how much the Dallas Cowboys

were worth in 1989. You know, like it just put it drawing that straight line. I mean, probably the most interesting thing

from a media standpoint about the one Soto signing to me is how it is like it is the embodiment of a tweet in so many

different directions. Like everybody had a different sort of like worthless but hilarious stat to go with it what that amount of money could buy you in sports otherwise, like how many,

you know, how much money he'll be making in whatever year and comparing it to other people that the Mets or other teams are still paying, just, you know, comparing it to other people, you know, you could have bought,

you could have bought 6,000 Babe Ruth's with that amount of money, whatever. I mean, it's just, there's just so, like, everybody has a tweet for this. And that's what I think makes it so perfect.

That's what's different about A-Rod, because when A-Rod signs, there was, there was some legitimate, like sports is dying, everything's going to hell feeling within sports media. You had columnists and people that felt that way. Nobody feels that way anymore.

No. So you're just having fun with the figure. You're just getting it, as you say, for 6,000 mini-babreuse or whatever we can buy for that amount of money. What can't you buy for $765 million? Oh, man, that's maybe a more interesting tweet. Yeah. Yeah. Could you, yeah. Hmm. What professional athlete could you get to just like play the game on a makeshift court or field in your backyard? Who says no to $765 million? Was this like in the band to make a tape just for you? Yes. Yes. Give up your career. Here's $765 million. Give up your career and just play the game for my amusement, you know, against some of my friends. LeBron says no. Does anybody else say no?

Juan Soto, apparently. Juan Soto would be the answer. My favorite line about this comes from the talented writer and my pal Joseph Bean Khan. He tweets, the first piece of advice I give to young freelancers is, every editor is a Mets fan. So always pitch after Mets wins. Tomorrow is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get your ambitious feature greenlit.

That's a good point. Mm-hmm. Typing that email to Sean Fennacy right now, David. Mm-hmm. Some big plans for 2025 that will involve a lot of international travel. It was that a question. David's silent because he's actually thinking about what he's going to write the fantasy letter. Sean's a little bit too.

Yeah, Sean's a little bit too hurt damage a Mets fan. I haven't actually read his tweets or gotten any direct reaction from him after the Juan Soto signing. I mean, the thing is at $765 million, if you're a self-loathing fan of the Mets, it's pretty easy to see the downside here, right? Is there any other kind, by the way? Speaking of which, Bobby Wagner, what can we extract from him over the next 24 hours? Another golden opportunity. All right, David, coming up on the press box and battle defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth is ready for his close-up.

What's the plan to save TV news again? Plus some thoughts on college football's 12-team playoff season one. And I read the magazine story that inspired the movie, National Land. Campoons Christmas Vacation. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and a rested and ready producer, Brian Waters, here with you.

David, we haven't gotten a chance to talk about Pete Hegeseth yet. Pete Hegesith is a veteran who served in Iraq. He was a host of Fox and Friends Weekend. Mm-hmm. and a savvy TV consumer named Donald Trump watched him and then nominated him to become Secretary of Defense. Yeah.

Everything that's happened over the last couple of weeks has been a strange media gambit inside a media gambit. Trump spots this handsome, articulate man on TV. reporters find damning revelations about the man's past and then the handsome articulate man and his mom go back on TV to try to save his nomination sure

these are some of the revelations if you've missed them Jane Mayer and the New Yorker wasn't that an good old-fashioned New Yorker investigative feature yeah that was on December 1st she reported as the magazine put it, that Hexith was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement,

sexist behavior, and repeatedly being repeatedly intoxicated on the job. A few days before that piece, the New York Times as Sharon LaFranier and Julie Tate got an email that Hegsus' mother, Penelope, wrote to him in 2018. Give you a little flavor of that email. you are an abuser of women. That is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around,

and uses women for his own power and ego. NBC had a separate report quoting current and former Fox employees talking about Heg's drinking. And then there was a report about an accusation of sexual assault from 2017. Mayor said that in 2020,

Hegsa's secretly agreed to a financial settlement with a woman and her husband in which he agreed to pay them an undisclosed sum, both sides agreed to sign non-disclosure agreements concealing everything about the incident. So two observations

here. One is we've gotten the embattled nominee B-roll of Pete Hegseth. Yeah. Walking around the Capitol and not answering questions shouted by television news reporters. His question answering has

mostly on the Megan Kelly show. Yeah. And then we've gotten Republican settling on every politician's favorite defense against bad news, which is these are just anonymous sources. Yeah. Anonymous sources. Never mind that one of the sources is an email written by Pete Hegs's own mom. Yeah.

Which seemingly would be on the other side of the world from an anonymous news report. Mm-hmm. but I want you to listen to Florida Senator Rick Scott try that defense on CNN's Jake Tapper. These anonymous sources say these things without willing to go on, go on your show or some show, and have you asked them all these other questions? A point that you're making here.

The woman who accuses Pete of raping her in 2017, although the police, we should note, did not charge him with any crime. That woman, Pete, Tegseth, paid her, money and she signed a non-disclosure agreement so she can't come on my show to talk about it. Do you think Pete should release her from the NDA so that I can ask her the questions that you want me to? Absolutely not. There's so many, think about it. Jake, you know how many people, wait, wait,

Jake, we know how many people sign non-disclosures just to eliminate something, not that they ever did anything wrong and he was never, he was never, you know, never charged with anything. Do you want me to ask her questions or do you not want me to ask her questions? I'm confused. You got to watch the video to really appreciate this because Rick Scott has a face. I've come on with this nice young man, Jake Tapper, to do a hit in defense of Donald Trump's nominee. And I've walked right into a bear trap. Yeah, of course. If only someone would put their name to these accusations, Jake says, we will take you up on that.

Yeah, great idea. You should never do that because that contract should not be violated in any way. Pete Hex's mom, Penelope, went on Fox and Friends to do her part to try to save the nomination. She was talking to Steve Ducey, who of course had some very tough and pointed questions. Now, Penelope Hexed is the one that wrote the email that I quoted from, but she said that almost immediately she told her son she did not mean it. Let me make two statements first, and one is to President Trump. And I want to say thank you for your belief in my son. We all believe in him.

We really believe that he is not that man he was seven years ago. I'm not that mother. And I hope people will hear that story today and the truth of that story. That line is directly out of a confirmation hearing. I'm not the man I was seven years ago. I don't think I've heard I'm not the mom I was seven years ago. seven years ago this whole interview was fascinating

because she sounded like the nominee I'm here to tell the truth I'm here to address female senators a hem Joni Ernst from Iowa directly I'm here to convince you

she also had something to say about the media part of today is to discredit the media and how they operate when they contact you I let a few phone calls go but then they call you and say they threaten you that's the first thing they do

they say unless you make a statement we will publish it as is and I think that's a despicable way to treat anyone threats are dangerous and they're hard on families I have some sympathy for Penelope Hexeth in that moment

here's an email you wrote to your son in 2018. The New York Times has gotten their hands on it. They're calling you and telling you they're going to print it in the newspaper or on the website, as it were. And you are not a public figure. And that can seem very scary and to use a word she uses there threatening. But what they're doing when they call. you and say that is giving you a chance to respond. Yeah.

To offer context, which appeared in the original New York Times article. That bit I told you about her saying, yeah, I wrote it, but I immediately regretted writing it. Uh-huh. And that's not the person I know. And that all, all that sentiment appears in that article. But you can understand how somebody can go on there and go, those reporters were threatening me by saying they're going to print this. And what they're doing is they're actually, they're going to print it anyway.

They're giving you a chance to add your side of the story. Right. That's not a threat, right? I mean, it's just kind of a statement of reality. I mean, it's easy to frame that way. And you've heard that a million times in various stories. But yeah, I mean, they're going to run the story. Do you want to comment?

You know, like that's what they give you drop dead dates. It all seems, we've seen this on TV shows. It all seems very dire in the moment. But, you know, that's your opportunity. If you don't have, if you literally don't have anything to hide, that really shouldn't be that big of a deal. You know, Brian, we heard you mowed your yard today. You know, do you want to come?

We're going to press in five minutes. You have a comment? You're like, yeah, I mowed my yard. They're like, no, I did not mow my yard. It would definitely be the latter for me. I paid a neighborhood kid 20 bucks to mow my yard. Yeah, nothing to hide. Are you just as fascinated as I am about the whole embattled nominee

business that's going on right now? go on flesh that out a little bit because I am but I want to know what you mean well just I mean this is like not a standardized test

that Pete Hexeth has to pass he just has to go out there and theoretically theoretically mount a defense that will convince 50 Republican senators out of 53

to vote for him because we know there's no way Trump will ever get to a point where he puts him up there and then he loses a nominating vote. That will never happen for the embarrassment of everyone. Yeah. So what we're doing is we're sending him around. We're putting him on television, which Trump likes. He's fighting something that Trump likes.

Yep. He's going in for these meetings with people like Joni Ernst and then we're trying to read the tea leaves of what Joni Ernst says or doesn't say, or I guess Lindsey Graham had one of those in the hallway too the other day about will they vote for him or will they not vote for but it's all on this very passive aggressive, theoretical level. Yeah. And of course,

it begins and ends with, does Donald Trump want to deal with another week of stories about Pete Heggs that they're not? Yeah. Is that important enough to Donald Trump? Mm-hmm. And you read that thing, and I saw Kristen Welker asked him about this

in the meet the press interview over the weekend. The thing, Trump overlooks lots of things potentially about his nominees. But Trump does not drink. Yeah. And so you have this idea of, oh, is he, this guy has, you know, you've been drinking in the past. Is that the red line with Donald Trump when it comes to a nominee?

Yeah, you see that a lot. I mean, it apparently, I mean, obviously is very meaningful to him. But, you know, we haven't really seen it. I mean, you would think if it was that meaningful to him, he would have already acted in this case. Now, by acted, do you mean sounding out Ron DeSantis? potentially doing the job potentially yeah i mean but but it's i don't know i mean it's it seems to be a sort of low level priority for him at least from where i'm sitting who knows i mean listen

it's this everything feels very different with this nomination cycle and largely it's because it's not picking conventional candidates you know i mean it's sort of like i mean this feels like a like a like a movie that you grew up with you know it's like big or something where it's like all a sudden you get this, you're running the toy company and you hire all your friends to do these jobs that are kind of like kind of down there, kind of up their alley or whatever, but not exactly, you know, they're clearly unqualified. Um, uh, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I, I, he seems like, Hegsseth in particular seems like a supremely unqualified candidate and for a lot of reasons, uh, that you've mentioned and Tulsi Gabbard, you know, don't even get me started. But at the same time,

there is a logic to it, right? I mean, not a logic. There is, like, you know, I don't mean to, like, promote a, I mean, to pat Trump on the back. But, you know, Trump at his core is, he's not a building guy. He's a marketing guy. A million people have pointed this out, right? And this is really just like that he's, he's assembling the marketing cabinet. That's why he's picking people from TV.

He's not talking, he's not looking for people who are good at doing the job. He's looking for people who are, like, good at selling the argument, right? I mean, that's what all of these people have in common. common. They're like public, like forward facing figures. You know, and, and, and, and, and I think they'll probably, probably end up being a terrible idea for like, you know, actually getting anything done. But I understand, but like it, they, it does kind of all hold together. Um, but the heck's this thing will be, well, you know, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, I guess be interesting to see how it goes to see how far you can push someone who is, who is, who is, you know, pretty significantly underqualified

for the role before all the allegations about it. started coming out. I mean, Lord, I would hate to be in front of a congressional panel discussing my like drinking history. But once you have to go on a news show and just be like, you know, drinking is not a problem for me. And then you're just like parsing out details of, you know, your morning drinking situation. I mean, it's like, you know, the, the arguments kind of already lost. The question is, as with all things Trump, just just sort of perseverance in the face of, and denial in the face of what we traditionally, define as failure get you through, you know? And it seems like Trump's putting a lot of, I mean,

is judging people by their ability to hang tough. Yeah, we could do the whole power ranking of things Trump admires, but fighting, I think would probably be number one. Fighting whatever it is, no matter what the charges are, no matter how true they are, no matter how disqualifying they are. It's interesting what you say about marketing. I completely agree. So I guess what we have here is, Pete Hexeth before he can market the great successes of the second Trump administration has to market himself. Yeah. Both to the Senate and to Trump.

So that Trump just doesn't pull the cord and say, okay, Ron DeSantis. Yep. You're my guy. Funny sentence from Carlos Lazada in the New York Times. I can never decide whether embattled or beleaguered is the preferred adjective to describe a cabinet secretary pick whose confirmation chances appear to be vanishing. I don't know that we overthink this though, David. Embattled is the word we use here for a reason.

This has been a banner week or two for Embattled. Been a lot of embattlements and a lot of formers too in the Trump cabinet picks. What's the plan for saving TV news? Tom, glad you asked. I saw this little line in a piece by Brian Steinberg in Variety. It was actually the, it was actually the, I believe it was Oliver Darcy's summary. CBS News said it will launch on streaming a 30-minute continuation of John Dickerson's evening news program.

It will be called, wait for it, David, CBS Evening News Plus. Oh, my God. I come back to this all the time on the show because I have yet to hear even the modestly successful or interesting plan for saving television news as we know it. We had a big problem here. Like when we have the rebels are in the Syrian capital and we have Clarissa Ward reporting from Damascus. Sure.

We know that works. Uh-huh. Oh, for it to attract viewership, sure. Or just to be, yeah, compelling. I want to watch this. This is interesting. I don't know that that means subscribe to CNN, but at least I will watch the Twitter clip of that thing happening.

Yeah. But just the behavioral thing as we move from a world of television to a world of streaming. Uh-huh. And that so much of news, and I would include cable news, network news, sports center. Yeah. You know, all the ESPN news and studio shows. That stuff just to me, it had a happy existence, both of something you watched and something you just sort of had on as background noise.

Yeah. Is anybody going to watch a friend? I'm permanently watch this? And how are we going to get people in the streaming world? It's funny. I watch a lot of TV in the background still, but I feel like we're moving away from that, at least in terms of like metrics, you know?

I mean, the degree to which, you know, waiting rooms kept the news networks afloat over the years, I think is probably, will never fully know. If you go to a waiting room now, especially in this like,

whatever, like hyper polarized point. Like you go to the wait. room now, they're showing like HGTV or like the cooking channel or like a food network, like whatever. Like there's there's other stuff playing or, you know, now if you're, some waiting rooms are, you know, they're showing the, they're showing ESPN. They're showing the game, you know, if you're waiting for a haircut of sports clips or whatever. But, but there's, there's more segmentation there and like the variety you can watch on TV. But I do think, I don't know the answer. I think that

the ESPN question is actually probably meaningful. We've talked a million times. in person, I mean, on and off the air about the sort of whether or not the newscaster, the star was more important than the brand. And you, it's, it's funny when you think about CBS Evening News Plus, that I say that correctly? You did. This, the CBS Evening News Plus, we love John Dickerson, right? But it's like, but is John Dickerson's star significant, is the fact that he's the one doing the plus, actually is that going to bring more people to the, to this over the top product,

more so than just like whoever else the backbencher would be that could do it and, you know, release it 30 minutes earlier while John Degger isn't still doing the evening news? Is that meaningful? Is it, I mean, in the answer might be yes. I'm not, I'm not implying that the answer is no. And just sort of like, well, does the one, I mean,

does having one plus, program really make a meaningful difference. So that's how I think the real question is. I mean, it's like if what's more important? The host or the brand of CBS evening news or is it just CBS news? And if so, like, wouldn't it be more helpful just to release one every 30 minutes and make John Dickerson do it for like 14 hours a day, you know, or like what? Like news radio?

Yeah, exactly. Like isn't, isn't like, isn't weirdly like, you know, just public radios model here? the, like, the best one for this? Like, is it that is, I mean, just like, hey, we're just going to, like, have trustworthy voices. Just reading the news the top of every hour. And then going into, you know, sending it in different directions from there. Yes.

John, I'm sorry, you've been demoted from the CBS evening news and evening news plus to 1010 wins. Well, okay. NPR's a way. David's imagination. But, I mean, I do it just, I, I guess I'm more interested in what the question was that they were trying to answer than anything else. Because I don't know what this, what, I mean, this everything. think just like everything else. And it's easier to say in retrospect. But like so many of these saving the news network conversations, it's like what was the idea? What were you trying to

solve for? Well, that's what it is. I mean, you're taking a thing that was already in decline. And you're like, how can we refit this thing for the streaming age? There was another news item that was similar this week. Alex Sherman was talking about these ESPN offerings that are now popping up on Disney Plus, which you might have noticed over the holiday season. Oh, yeah, absolutely. With your kiddos. And there's going to be a sports center daily just for Disney Plus targeted to more casual fans. And my thing isn't like, first of all, if I had to pick somebody to like bridge the divide between the old world of network news and the new world of streaming to cross the land bridge as our ancestor did many moons

ago, it would probably be somebody like John Dickerson who could dignify both of those worlds. Oh, yeah. What I'm afraid of is that you're sitting there. they're looking at your Disney Plus account or Max or whatever it is and you have the following choices every movie and television show ever made. Yeah. Or a newscast. Yeah, that's what I mean. I think I think who's going to pick that. I don't know how much more people are paying attention to what's on their TV. But I guarantee they're spending more time picking what to push play on. And they're not just picking the channel that they can mind, you know, here's a channel I can, I don't have to think about for the rest of the day.

Even if you're not going to pay attention to rear window, it's like, oh, shit, rear windows on. I'm going to push play and do my work while this is, while this is, you know, hovering in the background. Totally. Like, it's the end of wallpaper TV. And news is awesome when done well on its own, but it's also awesome wallpaper. Yeah. Oh, it's, yeah.

So if you take that category out, if the waiting room you speak of is no longer news and really, really old magazines, but HGTV or the. game or whatever it is. I'm just like who is affirmatively picking this. And that's like that is like a big problem for news in general. We talk about newspapers all the time like what is the thing if you don't have to rely on these institutions to get your information? The newspaper, CNN, CBS, whatever it is. If you can just kind of inhale news a little bit from social media and Facebook and whatever else, what are you what is going to make you push that button? What's the thing? Especially again, when confronted with every entertainment choice humanly possible

that was being unimaginable for young Brian and David. Yeah. And I'm just like, I don't know the answer to that. And I don't think anybody else does either. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, a beloved holiday movie used to be a magazine story. And I read it. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week, David, where we celebrate a gag. It was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

nominees to at the press box pod on Twitter or Blue Sky, where they are always, always gratefully received. David, President-elect Donald Trump met in Paris on Saturday with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. It was an overworked Twitter joke to take the picture of the two of them and write, They're eating the frogs. They're eating the frogs. thanks to Tony Pod Guy Groves for that one.

If you think it's going to be a long four years, congrats. You made the Overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, can we spend five minutes talking college football? Please. This is college football's first year with a 12-team playoff,

which you can think of as season one of the new college football television show. Yeah, absolutely. Owned and operated by ESPN. I've always loved college football for two reasons. One is the identity aspect. People who are fans of the Yankees or those Juan Soto Mets or whatever basketball team, football team, you will never understand what it means to have the team that is winning

the game be the school that you went to. Yeah, that's true. We'll never understand just how weird and personal and wonderful that is. That's number one. number two is, and I always said this back in the old pre-playoff days, college football felt like the only sport where you were chasing perfection. Uh-huh. Like that great Josh Allen versus Patrick Mahomes game a few weeks ago,

that was incredible. Yeah. But it was also like C in the playoffs. Yep. It's going to happen again, whereas college football before the playoff was like, you kind of have to win all the games. Yep.

Or else you may not get to play for the national championship. Mm-hmm. So here we are, season one of the new college football television show, 12 teams now in the playoff, David. Mm-hmm. You knew many of them would have not just one loss, but multiple losses. Yep. And the thinking for me and everybody else is the regular season just won't matter as much.

Maybe that's a decent trade-off, though. Regular season won't matter less, but we have this month-long, amazing playoff that will involve even more teams playing for the national championship. Yeah. Dude, I'm watching on Saturday afternoon, Texas and Georgia in the SEC championship game. That game last year would have been a winner go home game. This year, both teams were in the playoffs anyway. Yeah.

We're only talking about a matter of seating. And dude, it was a whale of a football game. Hell yeah. It was not a this doesn't really matter football game. And the whole college football season has been like that. And that shocks me that it feels that way. And it made me wonder, it's like, did I have it just completely wrong? Was the appeal of college football all along that identity part of it?

Did the perfection, pursuit of perfection part? Was that cool and meaningful to people like me? But other people are like, hey, I like the NFL. I understand this idea of more teams getting into the postseason. Well, I think probably so. I think you were probably like, listen, every season, I mean, the perfection the perfection storyline is great,

you know, when it was with the, the Patriots were going after the NFL, like whatever. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a precarious story

to try to tell every year, right? I mean, it becomes not just repetitive, but like, you know, it's, it's, if your team loses in week two,

then what do you do? You know, then like it, it just turns off huge segments of the fan base. I mean, that kind of goes without saying. Um, but without dealing too much in like literary theory here.

I, you know, I don't know that it's, this is, you know, a hugely positive direction that everything is moving in. But in terms of just like engagement and stuff, yeah, it's more people involved and more people, listen, we know what sports is right now. It's it's understanding playoff seating and being and and caring more about the granular nature of that sort of stuff than than about what actually is happening on the field, you know? And just in terms of the past two, three weeks, I mean, just the. sheer number of like hugely relevant games that they've been broadcast, you know, that have been on television. It just feels like a huge, just like if nothing else, from a marketing standpoint, a huge step of the right direction. And, and yeah, I mean, in previous years, the pursuit of perfection, sure, but like everything is still largely segmented off in terms of, you know,

your conferences and stuff like that at this point in the season. I mean, it's, it does feel like a bigger deal. It does. And I think it's, it feels like a clown show a lot of the time, too. I don't mean to like make it feel totally like college football right yeah it's always going to have the clown show element but i think what you're talking about is twofold there's like a team like georgia or texas loses early and they're still alive for the national championship but then there's also hey if you win the big 12 if you're Arizona state you can get into this thing boise state is in this thing smu clemson like there's all of a sudden it has opened up more of college football too So there's just more

There are more interesting games More inventory to use a word that noted television personality Nick Saban used on the ESPN Championship selection show on Sunday By the way, I don't know if I probably want to open this Ark of the Covenant with Joel on Thursday so I don't want to get into it too deeply here

but Nick Sabin former coach of Alabama showing up on the selection show in an Alabama colored crimson jacket with an Alabama colored crimson tie and in the background was an Alabama colored crimson pool table

I mean that was like a message board fantasy made flesh and then he's complaining that Alabama was left out of the playoff for SMU yeah I'm like we didn't have to go to conspiracy theory college football here he's just saying it he's just wearing the clothes

like nobody at ESPN is like hey maybe a blue blazer today Nick so we don't just light everyone on fire who's watching this television show yeah and he looks so grim at the beginning of the show is like there's no way Bama's getting it he knows yeah he knows it's SMU and again I'm not conspiracy guy I'm just watching television just asking questions a red blazer all right David holiday movies yeah I know you already got some in the queue. What have you watched with the kids so far? Oh my gosh. Let's see, what have we watched? We watched Elf. We watched various grinches. A lot of grinches, turns out.

A lot of grinches really, really puts the Apple TV search function to the test. Jim Carrey, the no-go Grinch? Is that the red line you've drawn? No. My five-year-old loves the Jim Carrey Grinch most of all right now. He'll go back and forth. But yeah, so that's not my favorite, but I'm not calling the shots over here. Home Alone, perhaps? We actually, I don't know if we watched Home Alone since Thanksgiving. We watched Home Alone right before Thanksgiving. Home Long season starts earlier every year, it turns out.

Wife's a big fan of Home Alone, too. She's a fan of the sequel. So we have that one on on constant. The Pigeon lady in the park. Yeah. speaks to Dom. Yeah, concert replay over here. What are some other classics? I want to get into more of the, you know, get into the offbeat,

the non-traditional Christmas movies. Aubrey watched Gremlins for the first time earlier this year. So hopefully we can get that one back in there. Hell yeah. I'm going to try to get Etienne and to diehards. We watched Die Hard too the other day. Owen and I. What do you think?

He loved it. Absolutely loved it. Come on. Yeah, the last thing you want to do, I always go in with some trepidation, right? Because the last thing you want to do is to realize that your child's generation reacts to just like an action movie of your,

like you're used to, you're ready for almost any reaction. But if you look, watch what you consider an action movie and your kid thinks it's sort of ponderous and boring, then it just feels like you just, everything's been a lie. Indeed. I don't know.

Dude, we've had Christmas movies on all the time. And I can't even think of it. I came even to remember all the ones that have been that we've watched. There's so many that I... It's the new wallpaper. It's not TV news anymore. It's a Christmas movie. Where does National Ampoons Christmas Vacation land in your...

Well, it's a personally one of my all-time favorites. Not exactly... Like, I guess we could throw that one on. Like, I, like it's... That one does feel like one that Etienne, you know, would turn on and just be like, this feels old, you know,

although I know he's seen it and loved it. I'm saying if he was encountering for the first time now. And Aubrey would probably enjoy it in so much as he would enjoy anything that we'd put on the TV and sort of trick him into thinking is something for him. But, yeah, I mean, it's tough to find the perfect window for that.

I'm trying to think when I remember, I mean, I watched that in around seventh or eighth grade, right? And thought it was just the funniest thing in the world. And then, of course, you keep coming back to it every couple years as you get older. But it's a huge cable movie in like the early to mid-90s. Yeah, it was one of the great cable movies that like when you realize what the things that were edited out, you're just like sort of mind-blown, you know, if that's the only

way that you ever encountered it. Do you remember when we saw the secret of my success at our house one time and then the, in our late 20s? And I realized I'd only ever seen it on cable. And so they edited out all the weird sex scenes between Michael, Fox and his what like aunt in whatever his uncle's wife

and I just spent the whole time thinking she was just like irred just this crazy person who was just following him around and harassing him the whole movie and I just completely missed a really important plot point anyway I don't think National Ampoon cuts out anything that significant but you know there's some stuff it was a huge cable movie

huge cable movie so I flipped it on the other day and because our brains are just so rotted from computers and social media I get 20 minutes in, maybe 25 minutes in, and I immediately want to start reading the Wikipedia page for the movie as one does. I'm always making that calculation. Can I go ahead and pull up the Wikipedia page and not spoil the movie I'm watching?

Usually with movies I'm seeing for the first time, but in this case I'm like, well, I already know what happens. So I pull it up and I see that National Amput's Christmas vacation is based on a short story that John Hughes, director, writer, producer extraordinaire wrote in National Lampoon called Christmas 59. Yep. So I toggle right over to eBay and I purchased the 1980, December 1980 issue of National Lampoon, which came in the mail the other day. Now, I don't know about you.

but even as a student of magazine history National Lampoon is a little bit of a black hole for me Yeah of course We could both give you the If you don't buy this magazine we'll kill this dog cover Yeah We could give you some of the names That went through there

Yeah it might have been more of a regional thing right It probably had if we had come up in the Northeast It might have had some more relevance to it for us But yeah it's it's We're gone to Harvard It's a little before our time too I think or at least its glory period was. And when I'm flipping through it, I'm like,

oh, this is a genre of magazine that used to exist when we were kids, which is naughty boys cracking jokes. Yeah. That was Mad Magazine. That was in slightly more highbrow form, spy, Esquire, maybe in slightly hornier form. All the trademarks are there. You look at, you know, you look at the masthead.

And it's like, oh, PJ Arorick is the editor in 19. 80. John Hughes was an editor and the cheekily described Chicago bureau chief. He'd also written a vacation story for National Ampoon that became the first vacation movie. So I'm reading this story. It's very clearly semi-autobiographical because it takes place in Michigan where John Hughes was from. We see all the sort of hallmarks of the movie, this crazy family gathering with grandparents from both sides. The dad is Clark. The mom is Ellen.

It's like Chevy Chase and Beverly DeAngelo in the movie. There's a little plot about the dad getting the Christmas tree from a weird place. About dad being denied a promotion at work. Yep. It's, I would say, written in a more understated rather than Snide way. John Hughes, I think, you know, the Snide movies were more the ones that he sort of was a party to like the vacation movies rather than the rat pack movies that he actually directed in the 80s.

Yeah. So I'm reading along the story. I'm like, okay, this is just fascinating because here are all the raw materials for a movie. Then I get to a part of the story that is both bad and revelatory, which is that the story, Christmas 59,

contains an incredibly, crudely constructed, ridiculously racist character. of an Asian foreign exchange student who was there for the festivities for Christmas. And I'm like, oh my God, this is the character that John Hughes would take out of this story and insert in very similar form into 16 candles. Yes. Like, correct.

Oh, my goodness. Like, here it is right here in this Christmas story. Mm-hmm. Other parts of reading this that got to me, first of all, just. just the interesting sensations of holding an old magazine in your hands. Yeah. Ads through it for cheap liquor and tobacco. There was one that looks like somebody I tweeted out a picture and somebody said,

this looks like the CIA helping the Contras invade Nicaragua. Because it was a guy like looking through binoculars and it was an ad for camel cigarettes. Oh my God. also the way the stories used to snake through the pages turn to page 82 and there'd be one more column of type turn to page 90 maybe half a page of type wherever they could fit it and you just keep going and it's almost like a choose your own adventure to complete the story

yep one of those ads I mentioned has what I am fairly sure after a quick Google search was a picture of 28 year old John Goodman doing an ad for schnapps I'm going to encourage you right now to just go over to the press box alias and take a look at this because this is almost certainly John Goodman posted a picture of it there oh my god sitting with a young woman everybody listening to this please take a look at that that's pretty amazing you can find this story online if you're so interested if you're not interested in spending all your free time looking for old magazines on eBay

Where's the joy in that? Just a Google search? Exactly. What else would I have? I got a couple of only in journalism words for you, David. Speaking of Syria, I'm reading a New York Times column. And it explains the group of rebels that took over the country. Who are they?

What do they want? Well, the author's explaining that the group used to be part of the Islamic State. and for a time also joined al-Qaeda. But in recent years, they have talked differently. They have stated different goals. They have had a different self-description, if you will. Here's the sentence. After formally pivoting away from international jihad.

Oh, my God. Now, do we need to maybe have an edict here about use of the word pivoting? Yeah, that's a strange pivot. That's a big, pivot's carrying a lot of doing a lot of work there. There was the pivot two video and this article is talking about the pivot away from international jihad.

Yeah. Might just need to be slightly careful when we use that word. The other only in journalism, I'm in the car on Saturday listening to the Big 12 championship game on ESPN radio. Oh yeah.

Son and I are going to get haircuts. And Mike Cousins, who's a play-by-play guy, is doing the game for ESPN. and there was an Iowa state receiver who committed a penalty and Mike Cousin said he was guilty of the contravention. I had never heard that phrase before. I don't know if that's an only in broadcasting or an only in Mike Cousins, who by the way does a fantastic job. I had to even look up contravention, which means an action that violates a law, treaty, or other ruling.

guilty of the contravention. Well done, my cousins. All right, it's time for a feature that is always well done. Yeah. The man who's in the hot seat, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Let's do it. Monday's headline about the incredibly long new wicked movie was defying brevity. Defying brevity.

Today's headline comes to us for more than a dozen people. I'm going to give it to Jacob Larky over on Blue Sky. It's from ESPN.com, David. Oh. On Friday, the struggling Golden State Warriors decided that Draymond Green needed to come off the bench. Uh-huh. I did not see this. This is great.

Okay. So we got Draymond and we got the warriors employing a novel tactic. A novel tactic. What was ESPN.com's strained? pun headline. A novel tactic, like a trick play. Novel. It means

most of the simplest definition would be that it is something novel is something. Unique, different. Yeah. What you're using here is green too, by the way. So I should probably make that green. Green.

No, I had I had assumed. that. This is fresh. This is a green. God, come on. You're right there. Green acres, green thumb, green. Maybe not. This is fresh. This is, this is novel. This is different. It's the green.

The green New Deal? The Green New Deal. Oh, yeah. That's great. The answer. Very, very well done. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Blackson Magic by Brian Waters. remind us, reminder that you can remind us too, that you can now find us at the press box pod, both on Twitter and Blue Sky.

Doing some cross posting, David. When I find those funny ads in National Lampoon, I put them on both. Oh, man. So find us at one place. Two-time in it out there. Two-time in it, but we want listeners to two-time, both. But follow us at both places.

Coming up Thursday, Joel Anderson, and we'll be presenting us with the Joel enchilada. to start things off. I think I'm also going to get him to talk about Nick Sabin as a television character. Oh, that's great. Which down to that crimson colored suit has just absolutely made me chuckle all year.

Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.