The Press Box - Russia and Ukraine Coverage, NBA Locker Rooms, and RIP P.J. O’Rourke

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Bryan and David kick off the pod by reacting to coverage about Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine and discussing the latest war correspondent to capture America’s heart (00:50). They then break down Adam Silver’s recent comments about restricting locker room access (22:15) and dive into the legacy of satirist P.J. O’Rourke (38:22), before David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline (55:14). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen up all you New York fans. Veteran New York Sports Talk host, John Dostromski gives his unique take on all the big stories in the Big Apple and beyond, including guest conversations, gambling picks, and reactions from you, the listener. Check out New York, New York with John Dostromsky on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of The Ringer here along with David Shoemaker and our producer, Devin Manzi, sitting in for Erica Servantes. Coming up on today's show, Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, wonders aloud whether reporters should ever go back in the locker room. What's he really saying?

Plus, David and I bid farewell to political satirist P.J. O'Rourke. What made him great and why was he a humorist for his times? But David, let's begin with the biggest story in the world right now, which is Russia deploying its troops into eastern Ukraine, which the White House is calling, according to the Washington Post and other outlets, quote, the beginning of an invasion. Joe Biden was speaking just as we begun to record today. It has been really interesting to me over the last week or so to read the coverage

because tell me if you agree here, so much of it feels like, and here I'm going to use a beautiful Washington cliche tea leaf reading. Like nobody knows the answer to the most important. important question, which is, will Russia invade Ukraine? And now may be amended to, in what way will Russia invade Ukraine? So we are looking just at this constellation of signs from inside the United States, from our intelligence services, from Russia, from Ukraine, for answers to that question. Yeah. I mean, there's not a lot of comparable situations in which, you know, just speaking in terms of journalism where, you know, the brain trust of the New York Times has to sort of outsource its brain to, you know, whoever they have on the ground in Russia or whoever they trust in, you know, inside the government, it does seem like, and it does seem like the people they're relying on are reading tea leaves themselves, right? So there's just, it's like a multi-dimensional tea leaf chess match or something. But, but it's, um, Yeah, it's I think you put on top of that this whole level of this extra layer of

Apprehension about armed conflict, right? Like, just it's not there's never it's not an A to B it's or it's not a one to one But the media's culpability in our last war or I mean going all the way back to weapons of mass destruction And all that kind of stuff. Has to be ringing in their ears as like, with every piece that any newspaper, any television outlet, anybody publishes, right? Because it's all, it's not disconnected, no matter how disconnected you would presume it to be or want it to be. Meaning watching every phrase we print.

Yeah. Every headline we print. The way we emphasize certain bits of intelligence versus other bits of intelligence. So that we as a collective media, ascribing here, guilt to all of us, don't get it wrong. again, or at least don't get it wrong in the same way again. Yeah, I mean, it's, I guess, you know, in those terms, watching outlets over the last 24 to 48 hours tried to get the language right was really interesting. This was from Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy's CNN newsletter.

As Monday turned to Tuesday, many news headlines were about Vladimir Putin ordering so-called peacekeeping troops to two pro-Moscow regions of eastern Ukraine. I was surprised some sites use the term peace without any quote marks at all. As Jane Litvinenko, a veteran of the disinformation beat tweeted, don't even get me started on the schmucks printing headlines on Russian peacekeepers going into Donensk. Was Putin's speech the speech of a peacekeeper use words wisely? So there's one example. Stelter and Darcy go on to note CNN's homepage said it more closely.

clearly, Putin orders troops into eastern Ukraine. The Washington Post went with a similar headline with the off-lead story titled White House wrestles with whether Russia has, quote, invaded Ukraine. On American at cable news, the word invasion was used over and over again. So you see people being very, very careful. Just with, again, not only a Putin word like peacekeepers, but invasion. Is it time to say this has happened? And again, just as we were turning on the recorders here, you see the Washington Post, New York Times and others going, really going with that word after some guidance with the White House. U.S. calls Russia's actions and invasion announces new sanctions. That's the headline on the post website right now. Yeah, I'm looking right now as you say this. It's a very, it seems so weird to have to be discussing syntax, you know, whatever, when we're talking about, something that could be.

that already is so much more significant and could be something, you know, really dire. But in terms of media, you're right. It's an abundance of caution at this point, you know, I mean, it's like, but does it, I guess the question is, does it get in your, get in the way of reporting the news when you're worried about how it's presented? I mean, is, is there, is it possible to be overly cautious at a time like this? Or is the caution exactly what we need in a way that we have, had it before. Well, you're going to be criticized either way, right, if you're overly cautious or

if you're too cautious, you know, and news organizations know that. In terms of tea leaf reading, some of the things people are looking to, Joe Biden's own remarks on Friday where he said, quote, as of this moment, I am convinced he's made the decision, meaning Putin had decided to invade Ukraine at that moment. That was a big, big one. Putin's own speeches, including the one where he said Ukraine, quote, never had a consistent tradition of being a true nation. We know Putin has tried to eliminate independent media in Russia. So you have U.S. reporters watching Russian state television right now and taking it as more or less an official or semi-official statement of Russian policy and intentions. Yeah.

Julia Davis wrote a good start for The Daily Beast about this. It says in truly Orwellian fashion, Russian state media was prepping the public for the prospect of war with Ukraine. but attempting to place the blame exclusively on the United States and NATO. She also had RT's editor-in-chief appearing on a program and saying, quote, first of all, I don't understand why there isn't champagne in the studio. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. I've been waiting for eight years for this, dot, dot, dot, dot. It finally happened.

This is true happiness. And did you see, were you telling me about there was a Caitlin Collins tweet? Oh, yeah. That set Washington a flutter. What was that? I'm pretty sure it was Kaylin Collins just tweeted that, well, basically just tweeted that Joe Biden would not be going to Delaware over the holiday weekend would be, you know, staying in D.C. The way that it was worded from the White House, not from Collins, was that he had a family matter, that whatever family matter had been the original reason for him taking the trip was no longer a matter. And so he was staying, sort of passive, you know, passive voicing the change in his calendar with a little handwaves.

but, you know, obviously the reaction to that was, was, well, I mean, the existence of the tweet in and of itself was sort of ominous, right? I mean, there are reporters that would tweet every change in a president's schedule. Obviously, this is not one of those cases. There's a lot more, you know, subtext here. And that subtext was kind of spelled out by everybody in the replies. It was kind of, it's kind of funny to see, you know, we've talked a lot about how it's okay if journalists. or human beings on Twitter. This is not,

don't take this as a condemnation of it, but it's just funny, it was funny to see, you know, proper journalists, quote unquote, hop in the replies just being like, uh-oh, this means war question mark, or like, you know,

like just kind of jumping to the, or kind of sussing out, you know, being human. Like, so I was trying to figure out what they should read into that. I mean, because a move like that,

you know, gets you wondering. Yeah, and you see Joe Biden doing a version of what journalists are doing. there, right? Or the White House. Because if they say Joe Biden scrapped his plans in Delaware to rush back to the White House, that would freak people out. That would be, you know, that would

send a message whether they intended to or not. So they're monitoring the language and saying, oh, you know, Joe Biden thought he had a family thing, you know, but we decided, let's do that in a couple of weeks. Why don't you hang? We'll hang out at the White House this weekend, just to make it as neutral as possible, even if it communicates the fact that. that he thinks there's an emergency and something about to happen. Yeah. David, it feels like 2014 because we are about, we are once again experiencing the, how do you pronounce Ukraine's capital explainers?

Can we not have a central governing body for this? I mean, I know that we're all going to say, it connects the idea of a world government or whatever, but would we really object to just like a copy desk with Craig Gaines at its helm, just making these decisions for the entire world? Like he addresses America at times like this? It's going to be spelled one way and pronounced one way. Let's just get it right.

The New York Times did an explainer. This is how they say. So the name of the capital is K-Y-I-V, or at least that's out-spelt in the New York Times. Here's the Times' explanation of how to pronounce it. The K sound is the same as English. The Y is similar to the I sounds in a little bit. The I is similar to the first part of yeast. and the V is slightly shorter,

is a slightly shorter version of a W, as in low, or almost like the V in love. That is the New York Times an explainer. That explains things, thanks. The other thing I want to point out to you, at times like this,

America has a habit, not going to say it's a great habit, but it has a habit of falling in love with a war correspondent who has been sent across the globe to cover a conflict? Every time. Yes. Remember the Scud Stud, Arthur Kent from the first Iraq War

when we were kids? More recently, Clarissa Ward did a bunch of great reporting when the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan. Early nominee here is reporter Philip Crowther of the Associated Press's Global Media Services. Crowther has been reporting from Ukraine in several languages. I want you to listen to a bit of this. There's been a war with Russian-backed forces in the east, the Donbass region for eight years now. But despite that, the capital city of Kiev is relatively calm.

That's a certain of a war that, of the gung-as region, Toshtar Ukraine, and the Russian separatists in two reunions that will maintain the president of French, today and Moscow with the president of Russian, Vladimir Putin, and manana... That was incredible. He would go on to do that, by the way, in six languages. According to Crowther's online bio, he quote reports in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Luxembourgish, which I was not familiar with until reading his online bio. I couldn't, I couldn't believably do that in six, like, voices, like funny character voices, let alone having to have a comprehension of multiple languages. I mean, I, this is, that's one of the most, like, that could have been separate from the moment in time that we're in.

That, if that was just a guy doing it in front of a green screen, that would have been like a TikTok video that took off that everybody saw. Yeah. And yet this is the dude doing a job. Like, this is in the, from Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah. I really, when I saw, when I saw the, the, it's an Ava DuVernay tweet, and I'm sure it was around before. that but when I saw she wrote imagine being able to do this or whatever I expected it to be a guy

doing the news with like something going on behind him you know like you know like a bomb dropping or something in him one of those videos but this is somehow more impressive than that it's just incredible do you have a theory about why war correspondence occupy such a place in our popular imagination even now with the media you know being basically comparable to all the things America hates whenever they do those opinion polls. I feel the war correspondent still has a kind of status. Well, it does. I mean, it occupies a similar, not precise, but it's, I mean, it dates back to when we were kids, right? I mean, for our entire lives when we were growing up, the idea of a war correspondent with something special, you know, it had that same

sort of like abstract gravity that like quicksand had when we were kids, right? It's just like, wow, but quicksand no one cares about it anymore. but yeah the war correspondent i think that because they've all it's always been the perception of that that role being sort of a maverick character right so you could so they sort of withstand the denigration of the press at large and then even the more like quote unquote institutional correspondence richard angle does much more than cover war for nbc but you know he's he's often there he's i would say he's presented in a similar way it's just sort of they're all like characters a movie, you know? It's just like, we're going to cut to this, like, active background

shot with somebody like, the correspondent may or may not be running down the street to help you see what's going on, and they may or may not have shaved today, and that's just sort of part of the charm, you know, and, and it's funny because this video that we just watched was much more buttoned down or buttoned up, take your pick, than what I just described. And yet, the fact that he's just out there stringing for like 10 different news organizations, a different language for each one, it sort of shows you the sort of implicit independence of the gig, right?

And also the uncertainty of the gig. If you have to go out there and just sort of like be available to whoever's willing to pay you, that probably means there's some like fallow months too, right? So, I mean, but it is just sort of, I mean, I guess all that is pretty minor key answer to your question, but I just think it's,

it's just incredible. I mean, it does, it's like, you know, going back to our childhood, like the, I would say the most, the most sought after future career for every child of our generation was National Geographic photographer, right? Like, how many people did you know? It was on the list besides like second basement for the Yankees, yeah. No, but, sorry, once you get past the totally implausible things, there's this idea of not just a photographer, but like a National Geographic photographer,

because you get to travel the world and see all these things. You know, nobody dreams of being embedded in a, you know, wartime background, but it is part of that same sort of place in our public imagination. Yeah, rightly or wrongly, there's this great romantic atmosphere around the work. We had John Lee Anderson on the show a couple weeks ago. And the notes I got from people were like, holy crap, you know, like that guy. I mean, there's just this. And again, he's a great reporter, great writer. But there's just this impression in the popular imagination. I've been going through media movies recently so we can do some power ranking at some point. And it's amazing how many of them are about war correspondents, including a number of them during the 80s,

that I either forgotten or were completely unaware of, just because I think that is something filmmakers say is like, this would make a great story or a great movie. I was playing with this theory before we came on and help me hammer this out. So think about the average U.S. political reporter for paper for whatever. The gap between that reporter and a Twitter rando who reads everything about politics and has takes has really shrunk in recent years. The gap meaning what?

The gap between what that person is doing on Twitter and what the Twitter Rando is doing on Twitter. Okay. You see what I mean? I mean, it's like if I'm just reading stuff and tweeting out takes about, you know, what Biden's having trouble getting stuff through the Senate, I'm not exactly like that person, but the gap between us has shrunk a lot

because I just have access to all this news and information and everything else. And access to the audience. And access to the audience. There you go. But the gap between Twitter, Randow and War correspondent who is across the globe in danger, reporting, trying to get information and confusing environment like this one, is still pretty huge. It's still really, really big.

And I just wonder if that is part of it too. Like you can replicate a lot of what, and again, I don't want to imply that like somebody who's actually like walking around the Capitol interviewing people and, you know, breaking news is the same as somebody on Twitter. But you can replicate a lot of what reporters do on Twitter. Or at least, you know, by using their information and then kind of posing one as yourself. But I think with war correspondence, it's probably much harder to do that. You can replicate the output of what a reporter does, right?

I mean, you can, you don't, you're not doing the job. I mean, it also, it all obviously goes back to that sort of central irony that are all the people that are saying, you know, how corrupt the news media is or using the traditional news media, you know, the lame stream media to, like, source all of their stories, too. But you're right. It's kind of, it goes back. It's like what I was saying in the very beginning. We're all sort of forced to outsource our tea leave reading to other people, right? And when you, when you realize who those people are, that it's not just some, even just a foreign bureau, you know, that it's often just a person on the street, person who's doing the job of a journalist who's asking questions and trying to suss out answers, you know, from a very, on a very granular level. In some ways, that's like the purest distillation of the job, right?

And to have such, to have like such, have the stakes be so high, you know? I mean, like, you're, that person's reading of the situation on the ground in Kiev is going to affect the way the world moves forward, you know? I mean, that's, that's, I think it's, it's, for, for people inside of journalism, it's both aspirational and so terrifying that you, that you, that, Just, you know, the level that you wouldn't actually make, I mean, you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to do it yourself, you know?

I mean, to have that, to have that much pressure, it's just like unthinkable. All right, David, when we come back, I want to ask you about NBA locker rooms and the satirist PJ O'Rourke. But first, let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully. received. I'm sure you saw this story from the sports world. University of Michigan basketball coach Juan Howard took a shot, speaking to language. There was this whole argument about whether it was a

punch or slap or what it was took a shot, I think I can safely say, at a University of Wisconsin assistant coach after a game. After Howard was enraged when the coach or another Wisconsin coach called a late timeout, despite the fact that the badgers were blowing out the Wolverines. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Members of the Fab Five are still having issues with late timeouts.

And elsewhere is sports, David. Nice half-left there from David. Some sad news from TMZ. Aaron Rogers and Shailene Woodley have reportedly called off their engagement. Dang. Called off their engagement. It was an overword Twitter joke to write.

Aaron Rogers is still chasing that second ring. Thanks to Joe Zappecke, Kevin Anderson, and Chance, if you were the beneficiary of yet another Aaron Rogers offseason news cycle, congrats. You made the overall Twitter joke of the week. Do you see that thing he posted on Instagram last night, by the way? No, I saw, I was like in the room while ESPN was breaking down that Instagram story, but I got to tell you, I didn't watch it.

I wasn't paying attention. It was like nine-something Pacific. time. And it's right on the line for me of, is it too late to text Kevin Clark about this? You know, because it's like, like, he's probably, he might be asleep, but knowing Kevin, he's probably all over this. Wow. Another great year. I saw that he did a radio show. Again, half, half-assedly listening to the sports talk radio on the way over here today. He had somebody's radio show when they asked him about his future. He took a second to say, to basically say like aggregators there's no there's not going to be any news any news here is that is that what

we do now a podcast so we want to address the aggregators it's a sort of no it's like it's like the it's like the the the kind of has like the impotence of the of the off the record you know that we've talked about before he's just like i just want to say that no matter what whatever no matter what newsworthy craziness is about to come out of my mouth i want to just say for the record nothing that I say should be interpreted as newsworthy. David, let us talk about Adam Silver for a second. Oh, great. Because the NBA commissioner did something during All-Star Weekend that was exactly what

sports writers thought and feared he would do or that his colleagues in other leagues would do. You'll remember that almost two years ago, March 2020, the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the league's restricted reporters from going into locker rooms. And I think about 100% of sports writers thought, this is the right decision. You don't want anybody to get sick here if we can help it. But we're afraid you're going to use a deadly pandemic to kick us out of the locker room forever as a pretense for kicking us out forever. So that even when the pandemic ends or gets to a more manageable level, you'll say, you know what?

we enjoyed the locker rooms without you nosy reporters in it. So now we're going to maintain that policy. Well, that is what Adam Silver wondered aloud about doing over the weekend when he was talking to reporters during the All-Star festivities. This was transcribed by the Washington Post Ben Goliver. Silver called reporters going into the locker room an anachronism, quote unquote, said it was, quote, something we have to take a fresh look at. When pressed, he continued. As I said, I think we were designing, if we were designing this

from scratch today, it is an anachronism. I think we have a different sensibility, different sense of privacy than we used to, and I'm not sure that's the right way to do it. We should think about that. Sports writers were so bothered by this that Silver had to immediately clean up his answer with a

statement. This got tweeted out. Tonight I was asked a question about media returning to NBA locker rooms and provided my view on what I see as the awkwardness of our standard locker room access policy. We have great respect for the media that cover our league, and those comments were in no way intended to suggest NBA media act inappropriately while doing their jobs. We've made no decision on the modifications to our access policy

and look forward to engaging in dialogue with our teams, the players association in the media, on how we can best move forward post pandemic. So what do we think about Adam Silver in locker room? You know what? I mean, I was very, I don't even remember. I didn't review the tape. I felt like I was very pro reporter

when we had this conversation before. And I understand. I fully understand. Well, maybe I don't. I was going to say I understand the reporter's point of view. But as someone who's never been in a locker room situation.

Is it actually like the locker room? When they say, when Adam Silver says we're not going to let you back in the locker room, is he restricting access on a broader level than like you being in the room where people are getting changed? Or is it, is it, is that, is it that specific, like, if there were a, if there were an anti-room, if there were an anti, if the locker room led to a bigger room which people had to go through to like have coffee and donuts on the way out and the reporters were there, would that be an acceptable compromise or is the idea that they, is that the moment they get out of

the shower in whatever stage of undress they're in, it's important to capture that moment because that's when the news value is highest. So that is a fantastic question. I think it's exactly to the crux of this idea. If you restrict access to the locker room, I think it's in incumbent upon you, but you insist that you are not restricting media access, reporters doing their jobs, right? It's sort of incumbent upon you to offer something else in its place. Right, because Adam Silver's comment was basically like, when you talk about it being an anachronism and how our, you know,

whatever, feelings of propriety of change. Yeah. I mean, if the point is we don't need anyone to be around our players when they're changing clothes, like, I think we'd all agree on that, right? But if, but, but to conflate, but if you're conflating that with access as a means of getting out of access, get, you know, like removing access, then that's pretty gross, right? Yeah, and you are. And until you tell me what you're replacing that time that reporters get to spend with

athletes, or at least potentially get to spend with athletes, when you, until you tell me what you're going to replace that with, you are. cutting off access. That's what you're doing. Now, if you tell me, okay, well, they're going to go to podiums or do different things like they do during the playoffs, well, then we can have the second part of the discussion is, why do we do this in locker rooms?

Well, we do this in locker rooms because we're in a hurry after a game. You're right. It doesn't have to be there, but player goes to the locker immediately after reporters are on deadline. Reporters are working quickly. They have to write or they have to get on television. And so they want to see the, athletes as quickly as possible.

They also go to locker rooms because they want to have a certain intimacy with the athletes. Yeah. Because they want to be able to, at least in theory, go up to Kevin Durant's locker and be like, hey, I don't want to ask you this in front of everybody else. It may need to be on background or off the record, but can I run something by you? Yeah. And have the potential to either ask him there or maybe, hey, let's, when you walk down the hallway out of the building, let me get too much.

minutes with you so I can run something by you out of ear shot of everybody else. That's not going to happen anywhere else, right? If you do it all on the podiums, I can't raise my hand and say, Mr. Durant, I want to have an intimate off-the-record relationship with you. Can we meet after this press conference? He's going to walk through a door and we're never going to see him again. Right. So there is a very specific reason.

And again, in your thought experiment, could we have this in an ante room that is not actually the locker room, I guess, but are the players going to go there? Are they required to go there and just sit there in a chair? Are they required to go to the locker room? I mean, couldn't they conceivably just go straight from the bench to their car? Yeah, but there's stuff's in their locker room and they're required and that's that is a, but they are required to be there, right? I mean, it doesn't seem. They're, they're required to talk after game. Yes. That's part of that's part of the deal. Now again, they may not decide they don't, they may decide they don't want to talk on a particular day.

They may talk but actually say nothing or not be, you know, very in the mood to take questions, but that's the deal. Watch the game. We're reporting on the game. We get to talk to you. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I got to tell you, it does, for some reason, you say the word anachronism and it just sort of struck a chord in them. I'm like, yeah, it certainly is an anachronism. There is, Adam Silver is telling the truth. There is no way in which you would be designing

a sports league from the ground up and that you would have reporters and naked athletes in the same room. You would not state that as a goal no for your media athlete relations. I agree. And I mean

in just about any other walk of life, the locker room, and again I'm using a very just sort of like abstract version of it, but the locker room is where you would go to like have some time away from the prying eyes of the press or whatever else. You know what I mean like there's like you know someone there's been so many examples of people sort of like hiding in their dressing room until they're ready to face the music or like whatever not saying

that's an ideal from a journalistic perspective but like one should have the means of privacy right if they if one so wants um but it is totally i mean the NBA above all other leagues is personality driven and and and and and we don't need to get into like empowerment you know nonsense except to say that like part of what part of the power that all these players have and part of the power in potentially ending locker room interviews or doing anything else like that comes from an access a level of access and a level of notoriety that access provides you that doesn't necessarily it's not always fun, right? Access doesn't have to be fun, but it is sort of integral to the way that the NBA functions. And, you know, we just see the, there's all the press conferences that

that James Harden, you know, gave last week when he was traded. Whenever there's a big trade, these guys get up on the podium and they say nothing of interest, right? But they, but we parse it. You know, we can spend a whole day, a whole new cycle on it. And yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's, it's, it's very, very straightforward. You can't say I'm taking, we're taking away this sort of access without figuring, without discussing at the same time how you replace it. It's just, it should be, it's a given. Yeah, and I think access actually might be the wrong word, right?

I think it's, you're taking away reporting is what you're doing. Mm-hmm. And it's so hard to explain because if you ask people who are in the locker room, after every game, you know, it's not as simple as the example I had there of walking up to Kevin Durant and Kevin Durant tells me exactly what I need to know. It's watching people and how they interact with each other and how they're, you know, what their body language is like after a loss, right? Kind of trying to understand the dynamics of a team. By looking at player, by watching players, Bill always talks about that he likes to be in an arena because he can watch players on the bench

and he can see things that he could never see on television. Well, I think the locker room's a little bit analogous in that, only that you can actually go up and talk to the guys in addition to that, right? But you can also just learn lots and lots by being around people and seeing people in an environment that's not like super formal. I mean, just I was thinking about you today before he came on. Like, imagine if, you know, as a reporter, you could walk into a wrestling locker room. Oh, yeah.

after some event. And I know event, the matches go off at different times. Imagine if there was like an A plus match and you could watch the two dudes interacting,

sitting next to each other after that. Or imagine if it was supposed to be an A plus match and they actually put on a C plus match. And you got in there and got to just watch them. You could learn so many things. Yeah. That you'd never learn if you were talking to that dude at a podium afterwards.

Mm-hmm. Just by doing it. And if you had that right, if you had been given that right, that right since time immemorial, you would not want to give it up because you would know that as soon as it disappears, it's gone forever. And I think, again, I think sports writers sometimes it feels like we're overreacting to this because Adam Silver did not say, I'm going to eliminate it, right? He'd wondered aloud about eliminating it. But the leagues never give you more.

They never give you more. They take, but they never give you more. So if you don't react like this, they will take and then it's gone. And then we never get back. The reaction is to some degree of performance. I don't think so. Well, I think it's not that they don't believe it, but because the reaction is not, because if you don't react,

then they'll just let it go. But you have to do a sort of bare minimum of reaction in order to make, I mean, I honestly don't think. Performance implies that they don't believe what they're saying. No, I think they believe it. I think it's a warning. is what it is.

Right. No, it's a performance. It's a performance in so much as there were probably people that agree with the point of view I was expressing, right? There's probably a good number of journalists who are like, we will take a tradeoff. Sure, we understand, yes. So it's a performance to say, just in so much as to say that like, this is where we're drawing the line, locker room access, because they wouldn't draw the line there.

They would happily take the ante room, right? But I'm not trying to make light of it at all. You have to, part of, part of negotiation is a performance, right? I mean, if they, if the, if the NBA reporters got together and said, let's just play it cool. Let's just act like we're okay with this. We'll get what we want in the end. Like, they wouldn't get what they wanted in the end, you know? No, no, that's part of the negotiation, right?

Yeah. Because that's what this is at the end of the day. It's not in the U.S. Constitution that we get locker room access. Yeah. And as fact is, I've gone around the world and talked to other sports writers. I don't think this exists in any other place besides the U.S., at least on the level that it does here. I think it's a miracle of American sports writing. But you have to be loud about it because that's part of the negotiation, right?

We're going to get mad if you don't do it because I'm not sure what else we're going to do. Can I ask one question before we get off the subject? It might be a little bit touchy. Sure. You talked about how you can see things in the locker room that you couldn't see elsewhere. but sort of implicit in that is you're seeing things that other people don't get to see, right? Yeah.

Do you think there's a part of this where reporters are thinking, if they take away, I mean, anybody watching at home probably has a better view of the game than we do? You know, if you're there in attendance, like you said, the seats at Bill sitting in, you have just as good of a look at how the people are interacting on the benches we do.

Everybody can watch the press conferences on online on NBA TV on the post game thing. Is there a part of it where like the locker room is the only reason why some of us are still employed? And if we're not able to get that sort of access, they could outsource all this to some kid watching online and Timbuktu. Some of us are still employed or some of our bosses are still buying us plane tickets. Yeah. To all these away games. Instead of just sending us to the home games has got to be in the back of everybody's mind.

which I think is I think is I think they should just send them like come on going to away games is such a vanishingly small part of the bottom line of any of any major media organization

or their parent company or whatever else and yeah I mean that's the sort of coverage that fans like me are like dying for just tell me everything you see tell me like you know figure out what's going on

and please let us know but yeah I mean that anxiety is real and you should be fighting I mean you have to fight openly, openly fight to keep what you have because it's, it's not selfish. It's a, it's a realization that like you're providing a service to your audience. And yes, that might not be the number one priority of the league or your media organization.

Yeah. And I think when you think of like having this thing that the person watching at home doesn't have, it's also something you worked on. It's not just, hey, I walked into, the locker room. It's that I developed relationships that I have, you know, can go up and talk to certain players because they know me because I've asked some questions before, because I ask the right questions and get the right information, because I can pull them aside and check something, right? That's what you do. That's your job. You know, that's your job. And again, that's why I want to say it's not access is the wrong word. You're cutting off reporting. And you're going to have to convince me, you know, really, really work to convince me that it's, you know,

it's anything more than that, just cutting off a chunk of our reporting ability by doing this. Shall we say goodbye to P.J. O'Rourke, David, before we get out of here. Oh, my gosh, yes. The political satirist, P.J. O'Rourke died at 74 of complications from lung cancer. He's known for his exquisite writing and his conservative politics. Here's a line from his book, Parliament of Horrors. What a title. quote, I have only one firm belief about the American political system. And that is this.

God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. Where do we start with P.J. O'Rourke. I love P.J. O'Rourke. I read P.J. O'Rourke starting it. Man, how long? I think I probably did P.J.O. Work for like a book report, if I'm remembering correctly. not like super young, but it seemed, I feel like PJR work was on like an, you know,

when there was a list of books you could potentially choose from. I feel like I read a PGR workbook in like 10th or 11th grade or something like that. But certainly he was, you know, not as accessible as, you know, Dave Barry and certainly not in as many bathrooms around the country, but was definitely part of that generation of, you know, the humorist icon, which I don't even know where that man. is today unless it's like, you know, with David Sedaris and that and his ilk. Certainly there's not a lot of political humorous in the way, but we'll get to that.

To me, PG or work is significant, not just because there's nothing really like him left, but because he was the sort of part of an era of a singular style of writing that was comprised by a handful of real geniuses that doesn't really exist anymore, you know, that it's, It was that sort of like accessible humor writing came out of newspapers, came out of, you know, magazines, but really made its way into our lives through these like book collections, right? And they and to be able to, and some of it was new, I guess it wasn't all collected, but whatever. But to, I don't know. I mean, there's, there are a few flashpoints in my life as a writer and this is going to get real self-serving and whatever else. So you may apologize in advance,

but there's a few flashpoints. I hope other writers have these moments too, where you read somebody's, you read a book or you read a column, you read an essay and you think, when you're growing up, when you're in your formative years, and you think,

I didn't know you were allowed to write like that. Yeah. Yeah. And not only that, but like, you're writing in the way that I sometimes think, right? Like all these rules that I'm getting, that people are throwing at me,

Yeah, this sounds like a Beastie Boys song, lyrics. All these rules that people just keep cramming down my throat. You know, I can throw those aside because this guy has made it big. This guy is successful. And, you know, he's doing it in a way that seems very unique, you know? I mean, to call somebody a firebrands just seems pretty offhanded and insignificant, right? There's not really a lot of, like, adjectives or titles you could describe to someone like pjure work that would really convey

who he was in a meaningful way but he he was you know he was a writer's writer you know there's no there's no writer in the world that wouldn't have like like you know traded

that would have they wouldn't have traded in their whatever their gig was for what dave berry or pjure work were doing you know I mean it's like they were they were less serious in some ways, less, less, less, they maybe move the, the geopolitical needle less in certain ways, but there was nobody who's like working at that high of a level, doing a very, doing a thing

that really reached an audience the way that they did. Totally with you on the aha moments. Because it doesn't have to be reading James Joyce, you know, to explode your idea of what writing can be. And I think for us lowly journalists, it's often reading somebody like this, just that use, that suavity, that use of language. You know, you're right. Like, you know, it's not.

But, you know, he is different, I think, than some of those people in the sense that he did a lot of foreign reporting. Oh, yeah. And I say this as somebody who was reading his collection, Give War a Chance. Love it. Another quite a title over the weekend. Like, there are bylines from Paraguay,

Nicaragua, Ukraine, by the way, many, many years ago. And, you know, so he's going off for Rolling Stone and sort of doing all these, you know, taking on bigger topics. More than just, here's the funny thing. This week might edit this out of the show. I don't know. But was his, did he have like a formal office job at Rolling Stone? Or did he just have like a title that insinuated that he might and really he was never there? So he had the title of Foreign Affairs Desk Chief.

Right. Now, I thought I had a cool title. It was not half as cool as foreign affairs desk chief. And he explained because middle-aged drunk didn't look good on business cards. That's true. Rolling Stone kind of had that great, you know, sort of legacy of made-up titles. Yeah. But his was really fantastic.

And yeah, and I think it meant, it's funny, I think it just meant like you get to, we're going to send you around the world and do your thing. Mm-hmm. And we gave you this kind of high and mighty kind of wire servicey kind of. title. But really you're our footloose correspondent writing kind of sort in the Hunter Thompson tradition but with this overlay of

conservative politics and kind of being this kind of Republican man of the world. Can we go through his bio real quick? Born in Toledo I'm not sure I would have guessed that. Undergrad at Miami, Ohio starting in 1972 O'Rourke was a writer

and later editor-in-chief of National Lampoon. He left National Lampoon for big time magazines explaining, we had been like children pressed up against a window making faces at the grownups. I realized I was getting a little tall for that and should be inside eating dinner. Mention Rolling Stone, he wrote 20 plus books, had a writing credit on the 1980s Roddy Dangerfield Star Vehicle Easy Money during the New York Times. And then, and we should probably talk about this part of his career,

became the go-to-republican guest on every conceivable talk show. Oh, yeah. In the 90s. Like late-night comedy shows, politically incorrect with Bill Maher, you know, I just need to interview somebody,

and I want to make sure I have some ideological diversity here. Like P.J.R. Rook was the go-to Republican. Sure. George Will was also the go-to Republican, but they were kind of the two go-to Republican writers. I saw, I read in one of the obituaries or essays that came out after he died about how, you know, you hate to say it, like Tucker Carlson sort of copied the style, like the, you know, the sort of preppy trapping outfit that you would wear. But the Spenders. But O'Rourke was quoted as saying that he thought the we, the weirder you were going to write, the more straight you should dress, right? Like you didn't, if it would have been, he wouldn't have been probably taken as seriously if he had been, you know, rolling up to these Sunday morning talk shows and a leather jacket.

you know, a sleeveless t-shirt with his hair past his shoulders. He did have the sort of flop down in front hair, which has a very specific connotation to the generation that precede, in the generation that precedes ours, right? It's the sort of, the lack of styling product is, like a wink at rebellion, right? But, but yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that the sense of humor is that, that he,

clearly had makes him incredibly approachable to people who have different opinions, right? You can say if somebody's willing to sort of take the piss out of their own party, out of their own values, out of their own whatever, then like you, that's someone you can have a beer with, that's someone that you can kind of reach common ground on. That's least someone you can like, you know, have a conversation about politics without getting into a fight with. And I think that that's sort of good humor or something that's really missing right now, right? I mean, it's the idea that the idea that you could not even come to a compromise, but just

like come to a civil into a conversation just seems sort of hard to wrap your mind around. The bipartisan era of political satire. Yeah. It didn't matter that he was conservative, by the way, right? I mean, like, if you go back and read his essays, well, again, I was reading his essays before I really had politics. But, like, if you go, I mean, I don't, I don't feel like my opinion on, like, supply-side economics was shaped in any measure by reading PJ O'Rourke, right? I mean, most of the stuff that you really can, I mean, to take from it isn't maybe, it's not bipartisan by the strictest sense because everything's sort of, everything's got an angle in 2022. It's like we've divvied up every little thing. But, you know, for the most part, it was politics were secondary to the sort of political human experience, you know?

And it's a, I don't know. I just feel like it's, it's really easy. for us all to say there's nobody like him anymore. I mean, there's certainly nobody, there's not humorous on the right, you know, that have that sort of, that sort of appeal and that sort of, you know, audience.

Um, and not particularly on the left either, you know, I think that most, I think that, you know, I think probably the people who would be best suited for that or have decided that politics isn't for them, right?

I mean, I always used to say, you know, during the heyday of Rush Limbaugh, you know, and they're like, people would say, liberals can't create a Rush Limbaugh, and that says something about the party. You know, we always joke like, no, the liberals are listening to Howard Stern.

You know, liberals aren't looking for like a political, you know, echo on the radio. That said, Limbaugh was a sort of humorist in his own totally inappropriate way. And I think that a lot of, of that I just think especially on the right a lot of the things that made P GRO work great has sort of

been reduced to showy anti-establishment anti-establishment you know like growling and the general we talk I've talked about it before I've talked about it too many times but the sort of like idea that if you can like point out

a non ironic like a subtle like a a a minorly ironic inconsistency on Twitter that you're just like reaching the heights of intellectual curiosity and humor. Got them. Yeah, it's just not, you know, it's like, you know, the, Leonardo DiCaprio taking a private jet is not funny, you know, it's like no one finds it funny. Well, you have to, it can be funny, but you have to write the funny line about it.

Like, I think, I think PJ O'Rourke would have taken that for material because he loved, you know, movie stars who got. get into politics, especially from the left. But he would have had, he would have, he would have, he would have written a line about it. But you would have written the essay about it. And you earn, and you, you, you earn the reaction at the end for the, you know, the distance that you travel. Yeah.

I, I think, you know, Christopher Buckley wrote an appreciation of him in the York Times. Christopher Buckley, who's kind of his comp in a lot of ways. Yeah, for sure. Though I think O'Rourke was more, you know, kind of sneered a little bit more than, you know, in a comic way than Buckley did. But Buckley had this line. like he's kind of been replaced by Ted Cruz in a way, which is what you're talking about, right?

Like that humor is just like, oh, it's a senator who's kind of like making like, like, ha, no liberals, you know, and that that niche has been filled in that way, and that's terrible,

you know, like, this is not, Buckley's not happy about this development, by the way. But I would say if we're being, I think we're being fair. I think his heirs exist at like the bulwark.

Yeah. Like, that's where it is. among never Trumpers of which he was one in 2016, by the way. Like that group of people, now again, we may say like nobody writes like that, but of course nobody, you know, you know, I don't write like that either. It's sort of like, I think that's where the spirit of him lives now. I agree in terms of spirit, but I just don't agree in terms of, I mean, I don't want to,

like, you know, disparage anybody at the bulwark without citing specific examples. Let's kill them all at the bulwark today. No, but there have been a lot of examples of the use of people who were like humorous within the constraints of like regular writing, op-ed writing, you know, that's sort of like essay writing. But they're not humorists, right? And the turn and any attempt at being a humorist, even one essay, you know, one standalone essay usually just falls completely flat. It's a really specific skill set. So yeah, I think there are a lot of people who are probably in full. by him and a lot of people who and there are people that do fill that sort of niche in terms of

like the way we consume but there's just there's nobody there's nobody doing that anymore i mean and i don't know i don't know if it's that all the people who like i said all the people who are that gifted of just abdicated politics altogether i don't know if it's because maybe it's partly the way we read you know you did if you're not reading sequentially through a newspaper or a magazine do you really need the humor section to be like your your popcorn break you know like there's there's a lot of different ways that you would get that sort of you that you could get that sort of you know sensation by doing something else you can go look at you know gifts on ticot or whatever and laugh for five minutes between your new york times article you know uploads but it's a that's what i think the

me i think the media is just constructed differently is part of the answer here like just think about it. He was writing in Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, right? This is not somebody in PJ O'Rourke who was a product of the 60s. This was somebody who was, as he admitted in many writings and speeches, he gave a reaction to the 60s, right? And he is, but Rolling Stone says, we like you. We like the way you write. We're going to make you our foreign affairs desk chief. Yeah. Newspaper op-ed pages. Well, here's Bob Novak and here's Mike Kinsley. And here's here's this, right? You know, I just think it's just a completely different world that we're talking about.

Yeah. That he flourished in. Speaking of different worlds. How about the world where when you came out with a collection, if you were a humorist in the 80s, 90s, and maybe the odds, your picture was on the cover of the book? Yes. An honor afforded to O'Rourke, Dave Barry, Lewis, Grisard, Molly Evans, maybe. Yeah. And all the way through, like, the Tony Kornhizers and, and other people.

It wasn't just humor. It wasn't just political humor. But George Will was on the cover of his books. Yeah, exactly. Jeff Greenfield. Yeah, there's a lot. It's just funny. Like, who would even be that anymore?

I guess, like, David Sedaris, if he wanted to be. But if he wanted to be, he would be. Now it's just, like, financial advisors and, and workout coach. and stuff that are on the covers of the books. A couple O'Rourke lines before we go here. He wrote a book of etiquette in the 80s I learned from his New York Times obituary. This is P.J. O'Rourke on wearing hats. Quote, a hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life.

Nothing looks more stupid than a hat. And this is from the collection Give Or a Chance on Journalists praising Things. I love this one, David. Oh my gosh. If a journalist shows a facility for praise, he's liable to be offered a job in public relations or advertising. And the next thing you know, he's got a big office, a huge salary, and is living in a fine home with a lovely wife and swell kids, another career blown to hell. RIP, PJ, O'Rourke. Stam for David Shoemaker guesses the strain pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the best pasta in Toronto was tasteful. Nudes. Got it. Today's headline comes from Anthony Burke, David. It is from the Abilene Reporter News. Wow. Great state of Texas.

Over at the Abilene Zoo, they have a Madagascar exhibit coming. And part of that exhibit, David, is going to have those animal statues that they carve out of tree trunks. Oh, yeah. You can see, you can see the real animals. You can also see the animals carved out of the tree trunks. It's like a chainsaw, right? Exactly right. The picture has a man carving the statues with a chainsaw.

What was the Abilene Reporter News's strained pun headline? Madagascar exhibit. Chainsaw. Got a chainsaw going on here. Chainsaw. Timber. I remember where this is. remember what state we're talking about here

Texas Texas Texas Texas Lone Star What do you do with it I have no idea Madagascar Famous movie perhaps we're going here with This is very strained by the way Oh my gosh

A famous movie with chainsaws Oh Texas chainsaw masker Sorry So Texas chainsaw Menagerie Menagerie Texas chainsaw You got it. Madagascar?

Texas Chainsaw, Madagascar. Oh, gosh. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Devin Manzi. We are back Thursday with Margaret Brennan, the moderator of CBS's Face the Nation to talk about the art of Sunday morning television. And then Monday, David Schuemaker and I'm back

with more Luke Wormtakes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, David. right.