The Press Box - Sending Kids Back to School and Listener Mail. Plus, Justin Chang on Movie Reviewing Without Theaters

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker dive into the political battle about sending kids back to school in the fall, and what this means for the safety of kids, teachers, and their families (2:15). Then, during listener mail, they answer the question: “What do you guys think of the Bari Weiss thing?” (22:55) Then LA Times movie critic, Justin Chang, joins to discuss what it’s like to be a movie critic without movie theaters (40:00). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Jason Concepcion. I think it's too much energy to start with. 20% less. Okay. Hello, I'm Jason Concepcion. I don't think that was it either. 5% either direction. Either direction.

Okay. Hello, I'm Jason Concepcion. Let's do that one. Let's do that one. Can you just let me do it? Just let me do it. Okay. Hello, I'm Jason Concepcion.

And I'm Shea Serrano. We have a podcast coming out. It's called The Connect. and it's fucking cool. Each week, Shay and I will talk about two movies and the theme that connects them. For example, for our debut episode, which comes out July 22nd,

the theme is work friends. I'm talking about 1999's office space. It's about three friends who work at a technology company. And I'm talking about 1983 Scarface, which is about two best friends just trying to make their way to the top of Miami's very competitive cocaine industry. Another theme we'll have is mean mentors.

I'm talking about Fletcher from Whiplash. Jason's talking about Miranda from the Devil Where's Prada? Another theme. How about Matthew McConaughey doesn't understand outer space? I'm talking about contact. Jason is talking about interstellar. And yet another theme.

Oh, man, why'd you do that? I'm talking about juice. Jason's talking about Lady Bird. There are categories and bits and contest. It's a whole thing and it's going to be great or it's going to be terrible. I don't know, but I'm excited to find out. Me too. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, media consumers. You've got the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here. We got a lot of good stuff for you today. We'll answer your listener mail, including the question, what do you guys think of the Bari Weiss thing? And we'll talk to LA Times movie critic. We're already laughing.

LA Times movie critic Justin Chang about what it's like to be a movie critic without movie theaters. Does watching a movie on the big screen really change his writing? All that plus, David guesses a strain pun headline. and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, with all due respect to the Twitter blue checkmark thing yesterday, I think this is the low-key story of the week. The political battle about sending kids back to school in the fall. Let's reset for anyone who hasn't heard us talk about this.

You and I both have young kids. Where does will those kids be in school in the fall land in your stuff to worry about power rankings? Oh, man. I'm going to be honest with you. It's lower on my power rankings than it would have been a month ago or really, I mean, two months ago, three months ago at any point in the past. At this point, I think our family is fully reconciled itself to homeschooling until further notice or distance learning until further notice. So the anxiety of uncertainty, we've sort of put that to bed. the anxiety of a perpetual or never-ending future of, you know, quarantine and living underneath

a government, both national and local that doesn't seem to have any plan to fix the situation is increasing. Yeah. And it's, I mean, the more where I put together notes today, it's such a complicated issue, right? Because on the one hand, it's safety, safety of the kids, safety of the teachers, safety of the teacher's partner, the teacher's parents, the kids' parents, the kids' grandparents. But if they don't go to school, what are working parents going to do, especially working parents that aren't as privileged as we are? It means they got to figure out child care. It means

they've got to, in some cases, as you just mentioned, be a teacher. Yeah. So this is a really tough one. One economist tells NBC this. There are 78 million parents with, at least one child in their household under 18. It's almost a third of the adult population. So this is a lot of people and a lot of people who are in this weird state of either uncertainty or in your case, certainty about what's going to be a tricky situation come this fall. Now, David, do you think Donald Trump proposed a sensitive, wonky policy solution for this difficult problem? I'm guessing my answer is no. The answer is no.

He tweeted schools must be open in the fall, all of them from Brooklyn to Orange County to Fort Worth, Texas. And if they don't open, Trump threatened to withhold funding from schools, which he mostly can't do. But he threatened it. And doesn't this feel to you like he's just groping for any issue to try to close that 10 point gap with Biden? Okay, I already did the Goya Bean's tweet. Now let's just tweet about schools opening. Yes. For a second there, I thought that the Brooklyn to Orange County to Fort Worth, Texas bit was in his tweet as you read it.

And I was like, God, that is a really press box specific Trump tweet. Yeah. There was a moment that coincided with the first time I think I heard Trump talk about reopening schools where it did feel like this was a tenable. this was a passable oh this is a great double entendre a passable political football triple on tondra because there did seem to be the anxiety that you and I had been discussing for months kind of seemed to suddenly be ever present right and across the political spectrum the economic spectrum that everybody I ran into with kids or who just knew that I had kids were just like what the hell is going to happen with schools?

How are you going to go back to work if there's no school? And the way that he addressed it, I think, was the first, like the first step in parent or whatever, somewhere on the many steps of parental anxiety. It was a very specific moment in time where I felt like a lot of these parents were saying, crap, I can't go. What if my job comes, you know, reopens them, but school isn't reopened? And so Trump was addressing this very specific thing. We got to reopen schools.

You got to have daycare. I mean like daycare lowercase. We've got to have a place to send our kids so that the economy can reopen. Clearly someone said those words to him really plainly. And his response, like you said, instead of going, I mean, wonky, wonky would be paradise. We're not going to get anything wonk related out of this White House. A functional answer to this question or just the appreciation that this question exists would be magnificent. but instead of going even

just saying, I know this is a really tough call you just have we got to reopen the schools which is, I mean, the lowest of low information voters, we just have in a voting issue. No one in the world, there's no one in the world that can't think of a million reasons why this is a bad idea or a problematic idea.

You know, I mean, the only people I know with full-time nanny situations, well, one of my nephews is dating a nanny. You know, I have a couple of these, like, I've heard stories about this kind of from the, from the position of the help. That's a certain kind of nanny situation, but go ahead. Yes, exactly.

People that have full time or at home help, I know we're struggling with their own, I mean, with the help. I mean, they're putting their help in unlivable situations very frequently, right? I mean, their need is, you know, the need of workers often come separate. And we walk down the streets here in Brooklyn and see a lot of people who are. still, you know, obviously nannying full-time. I mean, that stuff's still going on. But the vast majority of people who don't have the affluence to do that sort of thing are in such dire straits right now when it comes to going back to work.

And the best case scenario in any other situation would be that the grandparents can help out. And in this situation, above all else, the grandparents can't help out, especially if the kids are being exposed or have the potentially be exposed to anything at all. The grandparents are, are. run incredible risk by just being involved at all in their grandkids lives. And it's just a really, really difficult situation. There's a lot of times where we sit here and you and I talk and we, you know, or I feel like

I know way better than the people who are making decisions. I don't know that I know way better. I don't know that I have a functional solution to this. I would love to see, to have like, you know, an a la carte menu presented to me from the government so that I could like make some decisions or actually know what I think the best move is. What's definitely not the best move is strong-arming states into opening schools. And these, you know, it's just like, it's not going to work.

It's just not going to work. And I, I see us get criticized sometimes for just bagging on Trump and taking the easy way out through a segment. And we are guilty of that, absolutely. But this is one of those situations where it's actually hard to appreciate how little detail or nuance is in his proposal. It's just open all the schools the end of the proposal. There was no page two. There was no even sentence to. And just like with Anthony Fauci, as we talked about on Monday,

Trump has then said about criticizing his own government health officials when their recommendations don't match up with his plan. CDC has called a full reopening, quote, the highest risk. CDC guidelines obtained by the AP said, there's no way there can be a one-size-fits-all rule that the government could recommend for schools for the Brooklyn School, the Fort Worth School, the Wyoming School, we can add the whole list here. But listen to Mike Pence talking this week in Louisiana. But to be very clear, we don't want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don't reopen their

schools. We're going to respect whatever decisions are made on campuses like this. We don't want CDC guidance to be a reason people don't reopen their schools. their schools. We don't, we don't want the, the advice of the health experts who understand this incredibly complicated pandemic to be the reason somebody wouldn't reopen a school. Just think about that. I mean, I feel like we lived through a lot of people, you know, friends and family included leveling accusations of previous presidents on both sides, but I specifically remember George W. Bush that seemed, that seemed in retrospect to pale in comparison to, to what is actually happening in this administration.

But the casting aside of the CDC, especially in recent days, the stuff that you're talking about, obviously the story just came out. They, you know, they've removed the CDC from the data collection role for COVID hospitalizations. This is, that's scary, scary stuff, right?

I mean, that is just straight up politicization of the apolitical parts of the government. And there's not any other way to shade that, you know, It's, it's, it's, that's messed up. I mean, we're in a real bad situation. And this is a total aside, but I couldn't help every, every time I see Mike Pence at this point, this week, every time I've heard Mike Pence's name, I've been thinking, remembering fondly, May 5th, which is now two, two and a half months ago when Trump announced that they were

winding down the coronavirus task force. And it kind of, and Mike Pence was a little bit like, yeah, well, okay, you know, like it. And I mean, what else needs to be said about a president who's just like, I need, the coronavirus task force needs to stop doing their job so that the optics will shift and it'll look like we're past this thing. And now it's the same. We're just in another, we're just in like the second verse or the hundredth verse of the same song. I mean, where he's, we have, the economy has to reopen. At this point, the economy doesn't even have to reopen for the economy so much as for just the perception of the economy. economy, right? The perception that the economy isn't shuttered is almost as important as the actual

economic numbers at this point. He had, Trump is just desperate to look like things are getting better. And once again, as we've been saying since the very beginning, he's doing, he's, he's, he, all he has to do, if he had just acknowledged the gravity of the situation, he wouldn't have poll numbers saying that like, the biggest problem is he refused to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. He wouldn't be like, he wouldn't be in the situation that he, that he finds himself then, trying to constantly recover from his own idiocy. Yeah, and we tried the appearance of the economy reopening earlier this summer. Guess how that turned out. Guy, have seen the news lately. Everybody had to go back inside. A couple pieces of news on the school front this week. L.A.,

second largest school district in the country is going all online this fall. Nobody will be going to school in public schools in Los Angeles. Super and tenant there said, we don't want schools to become a quote unquote petri dish. San Diego and San Francisco out here in California are also going online. Meanwhile, Orange County, where I live, the Ed Board recommended opening schools with no social distancing and no masks required. So, because apparently the coronavirus stopped 30 miles north of here. So then you have these completely different standards like that.

And again, we can talk about different standards for different places. they're not supposed to be that different. The thing I do want to circle back to, too, is this is not an easy problem, right? There was a teacher quoted in The New York Times piece by Dana Goldstein and Eliza Shapiro. The teacher essentially said, I'm going to summarize here, I have a newborn at home, and I also have my mother-in-law living with me at home. So I'm worried about the health risks if I go to school and then come back home and teach. But at the same time, the teacher said, I teach low-income, black and Latino

no students. So if I don't go back, they suffer the consequences. NBC's Benji Sarlin wrote this, quote, research suggests that earlier school closures, excuse me, disproportionately burdened poor minority and rural families who were less likely to have a reliable internet access or parents who could telecommute while assisting their children with learning from home. Women who have lost more jobs than men during the pandemic and report having taken on more child care duties would be especially effective. by any further disruption to schools. And the part you see them underlining there is

if you do all online schooling, well, certain families are going to need computers, right? They're going to need internet service who might not have them. And if that isn't complicated enough, then we have the whole thing of what happens when one child at the school that has reopened is diagnosed with a coronavirus. Do you send the whole class home?

Do you send just that kid home? CDC says school should dismiss staff and students for two to five days if an infected person has been in the school building. So then everybody goes home for a week and comes back again. This is an incredibly thorny problem. I say, I mean, I say this, you know, raising an eyebrow at myself and at you two, these are the same. problems that, I mean, these are in some ways the same issues that we've been like hashing out on ringer slack trying to figure out how the NBA bubble was going to operate, right? But this is actually stuff that matters, right? I mean, this is the stuff that's like,

like, you know, you can cancel the NBA season and I think most parties involved would be okay. I mean, exempting the lower level employees that the NBA teams are making billions of dollars will heartlessly inevitably fire. But that's a manageable situation. situation in a lot of ways. We're talking about this schooling. It's just the chess game aspect of it. And that's so dehumanizing. I know. But it's just, it's complicated. It's really,

really complicated. I don't know what the numbers are of, like you mentioned, teachers who have children at home, but I'm assuming it's incredibly high. And it compared, I mean, even compared to other lines of work. And it's, everybody is in a really terrible conundrum. Like, everybody is put, everybody's putting somebody at risk to make this work. It's the NBA bubble for 78 million people. Yeah. We think about that, right? Yeah.

And let me just pile some more things on here. What we talked about, you can't have a full-blown economic recovery if the schools are closed, right? You're creating a child care crisis in the United States. It's going to be a symptom of that. Learning-wise, we're starting to know that students are falling behind when they're not in a physical classroom. Dan Goldstein in the York Times points to research showing students in some cases,

quote, losing the equivalent of a full school year's worth of academic gains. That's going to get worse if schools aren't open in the fall. There's a union part of this drama, right? Union teachers in L.A. saying, we don't want to go back, right? One quarter of teachers in L.A. apparently over the age of 50, again, that's according to the New York Times. So there's so much complexity here. And the funny thing to me to come back and end on Trump is that there is a Trump effect, I think,

to this idea about whether we should reopen schools. That because Trump took this as an issue in the way that he did, he's actually moved public opinion. Nate Silver tweets this, I continue to wonder if Trump turned the tide against school reopenings, especially in liberal city states. And there's a Quinnipiac poll out yesterday that sort of backs that up. Voters say more than 2 to 1, 61 to 29 percent, that they disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the reopening of schools. That's quoting Quinnipiac. They also say 2 to 1, 62 to 31 percent that they think it will be unsafe to send students to elementary, middle, or high schools in the fall. So you've pretty much got the same majority saying Donald Trump's doing a terrible job of this as you do saying he's doing a bad job handling the coronavirus and a bad job handling.

the protest. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what else needs to be said? It's, I mean, like, hard to believe that people would have a bad opinion of the way Trump is handling the reopening of schools when he's handling of the reopening of schools amounts to a tweet that is, that doesn't work and is just politically and socially and just humanitarianly untenable. And, and that he still, I mean, I've said before that he seems to be just just highlighting all of the, all of the tropes about himself, all of the, the, the, maybe even sometimes unfair conventional wisdom

about President Trump. He's just making it all seem so true. And that this guy hasn't figured out that you can't lead through tweets, no matter how many times people have said that exact thing on Fox News to him. It's, it's just crazy. And listen, this is a real practical thing.

I mean, if all the people have kids have to figure out a way to leave their kids home to keep them from getting sick or send them to school. And we're just, we're in a really tough situation. We're in a really tough situation. And until you say, I mean, the educational part you mentioned is true. I mean, you can see, anyone that has kids can see the problems with distance learning, you know, especially in a, if not in your own kids and in their classmates and everything else. But until you acknowledge that just like, we shouldn't be sending kids to school. And you know what?

You said at the very beginning, you can't have a one-size-fits-all policy. I mean, you could say we shouldn't be sending our kids to school, you know? That's not-tall-tenable one-size-fits-all-fo. Yeah, and that's not practical. And it's not, and it's depressing. Right. It says a lot about where we are, but that's where we are. And the president isn't acknowledging that there's a problem.

The president is saying the exact opposite of the only one-size-fits-all policy that would possibly work. And that's sad. All right, David, let's do the Overwar 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. David, the Kanye West for president campaign has come to an end. An advisor says he's out. A hundred ringer pieces just melted away at that news. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write

Electoral College dropout. Thanks to basically every listener of the press box. We will not list right now. Conservatives, David, groping around for ways to justify the recent national surge of the coronavirus. Media matters quotes Rush Limbaugh. Quote, Americans should adapt to coronavirus like pioneers who had to turn to cannibalism. That is the way Rush is squaring the circle. Uh-huh.

It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Apparently Rush thinks the Republican Party should become the Donner Party. That's nice. David, on Monday, the Washington NFL team announced that they will, in fact, be dumping their racist mascot. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, not sure the Washington Lady A's is a good name, to be honest. Thanks to John Taylor. We can't get enough Lady A humor around here. And finally, Tom Tillis, Republican Senator from the great state of North Carolina.

has stepped forward with what he thinks will be a winning economic message for the GOP. Tellis said this week that people will vote Republican because they will quote, remember how good their lives were back in February. Okay? Our lives have sucked for the last several months,

but when they go to the ballot box, they will remember their idyllic life back in February. My God. It was an overword Twitter joke to invert a Ronald Reagan line and write, ask yourself, were you better off nine months ago than you were. four years ago.

You found the bumper sticker that's not going to be used by Republicans as they try to hold on to the Senate. I congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, let's just do, let's just get right this away. Listener mail. Here we go. Mike Ezekiel.

Reactions to the Barry Weiss resignation from the New York Times. Oh, man. My reaction was, I guess we're going to talk about this on the press box. I don't feel like I don't know I mean the whole I know that we're sort of in the social media

the on you know the era right now everything that we do that we talk about is more about the life online than it is about media half the time the posting the resignation letter onto one's personal website which will presumably be the base of operations for all

you know future money making you know money making opportunities going forward just seemed somehow very quaint but also very current year. I just love that. Like I'm resigning and if you want to know all about it,

you can go to barryweiss.com. I am, I would like to read this tweet from Jack Hamilton. I wonder what Barry Weiss and Brett Stevens make of Ross doubt that who is farther to the right than either of them but largely escapes the levels of scorn they attract because his work is nowhere near as lazy or dishonest as theirs. It's a great question.

Yeah. And when I, you know, I just am like, this just all seems like a controversy that did not have a good or interesting columnist behind it. I just never, I never read her writing. It was like, oh, that was a really good point. Or that was really, that was like a really well turned frame. I just, it never cared. Well, yeah, we, I mean, listen, we talked a lot when we've talked before about how so much of media is being driven by clicks and not, I mean, in a sense, seems sort of trite to say. But. But, you know, they're coming from the part of the paper that used to be the equivalent of the Twitter link that you were just, that you were obligated to click on and whether or not you were going to read it, right? I mean, that's what the op-ed page was for and a much more reserved, low-key, Ross Dothadian construct. But it does seem like, and I'm sure James Bennett, I mean, I'm sure someone has drawn the, you know, a straight line to James Bennett's resignation and from the, you know, is editing that. page and and what that meant for Bari Weiss and everybody else. But I don't know the what details we know. I don't know what's even out there. But it does seem like, I mean, I guess for a lot of people, you got to be willing to throw a couple of bombs, a whole lot of bombs to get to a place like that in this day and age, to get that sort of podium. I don't know

if getting there and, and I mean, I don't know if anyone's, it would be inclined to get there that way and then become more reserved, more thoughtful. It's a great question. I'm sure people are asking themselves that question right now. I want to ask this one from Dan, kind of a

related question. If you each were hired to run the New York Times opinion section from scratch, what three writers would you pick presumably to start? Ooh. Can I offer you a trio? Yeah, you give me yours. I don't know if I want to, it's

really hard to stop at three. But if I could just pick, and I'm not even going to go out of the New York Times here, Jamel Bowie, Michelle Goldberg, and James Pony Wazzo. And I'm borrowing him from TV, right? He basically writes, he writes TV reviews, but then he also writes the kind of, you know, meta-Trump criticism of a Trump speech kind of thing and the TV. What if we make him Frank Rich 2.0? Oh, okay. No disrespect. No. disrespect to James and put him on the op-ed page and let him write the kind of big cultural, political TV column there. And that's my start. Is that terrible? I know. I think that's great. I think that's great. I mean, I don't even know. We may be pretty ideologically, you know,

we may, you know, we may, you know, it's okay, Ross, you also come on back, you know, right? Yeah. First of all, yeah, the New York Times opinion section has like 100 voices contributing to it right now. It's sort of mean to put it only give us three options. I know. Elizabeth Bruning. I mean, I'm, I'm, I mean, I, I don't want, I hated to stop at three. But if you just had to just like, okay, that that's, you know, and then somebody else gets to draft. It's like a celebrity softball game or something like that. But, um, that's where I line up. All right. This is from our friend Megan. If you were in the NBA bubble and on the mandatory seven day quarantine, which of the books you bought, but never read, would you finish first?

Ooh. From dawn to decadence, David? You got two weeks. My bookshelves are literally, I'm looking around at literally empty bookshelves. All my books are in boxes right now, and it would be great if I could just look over and see, like, you know,

that copy of Thomas Pensions, Mason Dixon that has never been opened. That's a great one. That's a buy but didn't read for sure. Oh, yes, indeed. I'm trying to think what I, what the top of the list in terms of like things I actually wanted

to read were it would probably be man dare I say it would be a presidential biography of some sort like one of the ones like Ron Chernow on US Grant exactly the name I was it was about to say

or Alexander Hamilton I guess is slightly current but but yeah it may be one of the great or well yeah one of the great presidential biographies. But man, I don't,

it's just because those things are slightly timeless and the ones that are well written are actually really well written and really well and really thoughtful. I don't know. What about you? Well, this is, I think of,

there's something tempting in the whole idea when I, when I used to walk around bookstores, because I don't get to anymore, the whole idea of like a fat work of history. That was, you know, when I had the fantasy of you have all the time in the world, right?

doing is reading books all day, which sounds like a great life to me. It was always that kind of thing. It'd be like, oh, a history of the British East India Company. I remember that came out last year. And I was like, I'd love to read that. That would be so interesting to read. Got a great review in the Times. But yes.

So I'm going to just do fat work of history to be named later. This is from Alejandro. By the way, I just want to, I just want to say that when I say it's a great work of presidential biography, I'm not, I'm not agreeing to read any of the Robert Carroll books, especially if it means they have to read all of them. I just have we checked in with Robert Carrow to see how he's doing. I haven't read that profile in at least two weeks. This is from Alejandro.

Hi, I'm guessing you're going to cover how everyone knows there's a Washington NFL team story coming. But all you can see is, oh, there's a big story coming and that's it. What's the purpose of it? You can answer this better than me. I don't know what the... I don't know, man. I understand the emotional...

I understand the spiritual impulse to get out there. and tweet, oh, something's coming. Just to, you know, kind of plant your flag a little bit and also just prove that you know. And also, the story could be wild enough that, like, you just really want to talk about it. And that's the most you can do. But I don't know in journalistic terms, what the crap is going on right now, right? I mean, there's just been, it's just so, apparently there's just some incredible story that someone, It seems to be the Washington Post is about to drop on the Washington football team and their

man their their their front all it seems to be a system I mean some like crazy I mean some like widely wide spanning story about corruption criminality dysfunction no one quite knows what's going on it could be anything at this it could be anything but in every DC football writer and other football writers have been tweeting out these vague things just like, actually there was a, I looked in, guys, I looked into it and it, it is bad. It's going to be really bad. That's the tweet that every sports writer's doing. Yeah, that's not Brian talking. That's what every Twitter personality is said. And I would just want to be like, if you know it, why aren't you breaking this huge story? Yeah. Are breaking some part of it. Like, why are you, why did you check it out?

And then just like, well, I'm just going to give the Washington poster, dude. That's not really how journalism works. No. There was a, there was a tweet thread by, I'm going to mess up his last name, but Martin Astromole, who works for DC's NPR affiliate. And it was in response to this ABC7 news story that was decided that, I mean, the tweet was something fishy is going on with the NFL team formerly known as Washington Redskins. There's speculation that a bombshell is about to drop today. And basically, I just aggregated the tweets, which is what we're doing now, but we're not a news outlet. And his, Martin Astromo's response was, in journalism, if you have the goods, you report them. If you don't, but hear that someone else might,

you don't normally report that unless A, you absolutely know they have the goods, and B, have a basic sense of what the goods are. But even then. But even then, what are you doing on Twitter? Just like, it really does seem like, it really does seem like just kind of like glory hogging someone else's story.

Like, you just want to get up there first. You want to, like, get those, you know, get those retweets and likes and everything else, even though nobody knows what the hell is going on. It reminds me the people who have been to like an embargoed film screening and then just get on Twitter and I saw the movie. And you're like, okay. Thank you. Come back when you could tell me if the movie's any good.

We'll just bump this down to the street a week. This is from Derek Ashworth. While visiting Las Vegas last week, I saw a number of local campaign signs. One featured a candidate pictured with a mask on. Do you think the message of promoting mask wearing is a better use of? of campaign resources than displaying your whole face to voters. We actually had an example of this with Donald Trump, right? He finally wore a mask in a picture.

And then Sebastian Gorka and other people in the Trumposphere, I believe it was Sebastian Gorka tweeted, oh, Trump's going to win the election now because he looks like a badass wearing his mask, which he had been, of course, resistant to do in public for a really long time. I don't know. I mean, there is, there is going to be, this is going to be a really, weird election to look back at like oh wow every publicity photo of almost every non-Trump candidate had them wearing a mask at all times yeah and it went from it went at certain point the campaign

it went from oh this is a huge handicap to like this is a sign that you are a serious person right that you are taking the pandemic seriously and it became a camp yeah i want to say campaign prop because it's good right we should see politicians and famous people wearing masks that's good for when I walk down the Pacific Coast Highway here and I don't see anybody wearing a mask. I want more symbolism. Yes. But at the same time, it did kind of become a campaign prop to an extent. Listen, I don't think it would be a bad, if I were in the campaign management business,

I don't think you, I would say, I wouldn't say it was a bad idea, especially for someone who was running behind to put themselves in a mask on their signs and just say, hi, my name is Brian Curtis. I'm running to be your senator, but I don't care who you vote for, just put a mask on. Yeah. Yeah.

That's not bad. It's kind of like the Bullworth 2020. Yeah. But everyone's life is at stake. It's actually really like it's a public service message that people can actually identify as being important. I mean, that's,

I mean, just even from political terms, this is a pretty unique situation. And of course, our president's doesn't understand. My pal Galen Clavio sent in a Reddit page, David, that he said seems perfect for the press box. Someone on Reddit wrote code to basically search for coronavirus comfort words.

Wow. So whenever somebody wrote the phrase during these fill in the blank times, since the beginning of March, they put together a word cloud. So here are the entries into during these fill in the blank times. Oh, my God. Difficult, challenging, uncertain, unprecedented. stressful trying exceptional somehow homeschooling made the word cloud during these homeschooling times is funny tumultuous david oh yeah unsettled notable kind of a kind of a neutral coronavirus word there

nutty uh because you can see the right thing there wow and uh finally uncharted during these uncharted times i love this we'll uh we'll retweet galen's uh uh uh list so that everybody can pick their favorite coronavirus comfort word. Finally, this is from our pal Nick Field. We're one month away from the Democratic Convention. How do you think the Democrats will present a virtual convention and how should the media cover one?

That's a great question. My guess is they will, there will be probably not all, but a third of the big speeches that we're used to hearing. and my guess is that they will be, you know, presented roughly the same, you know, times during the evening and that the media will largely air them, as if it was really the convention because it's good content.

I mean, is there, is the question, like, what are we going to do? Like, what are the, what are the, what is the B-roll going to be? I mean, what are we going to do without an actual physical convention? I mean, they should, I don't even know. I don't know what's going to happen. I think back to the to the NFL draft when they had like the picture and picture of all the fans faces sitting at their computers. And that was actually the most like kind of visually interesting part of the whole thing. Maybe they do something like that.

I don't know. You get the remote fans? I would like that. Can we get like a thousand Democrats just to sit in front of their computers and cheer at appropriate times when Biden unloads a line on Trump? Do you think that like Fox News is going to have Frank Luntz in a room with people socially distanced and wearing masks? like everybody's on a on a stool like eight feet away or like between like plexiglass in between them so that he can go with like a long wand and a microphone in the end and ask him what they think of each speech what a time to cancel that uh quadrennial tradition i think the NFL if the NFL draft is exactly what I thought because I think this will wind up being totally different but sort of weirdly normal at the end of the day I guess one question I wanted to ask you in terms of the media part of it that Nick brings up is, you know, a lot of the stuff said at political conventions is really not news, right? It's an ad for the Democratic Party or for the Republican

party. And part of the reason you take it is, as you say, one, it gets a big audience. It's good content, quote unquote, but two, it's sort of in an arena. So it's a good show. So if we're having, I'm just going to try to think of it, just Chuck Schumer. I'm just trying to think of like, what will be a boring speech? Chuck Schumer talking from a remote location just into a webcam, is the network still going to air that? Maybe they would have aired that during the convention,

but are they still obligated to take it? And might they not take it because they're like, this is just really not news at all. And, you know, we're going to be a little more picky. I certainly think that they'll have to book, I mean, the speakers that aren't just the kind of givens,

the nominee, the vice presidential nominee, et cetera. I think that they'll have to, I mean, both parties will probably have to be a little bit more deliberate in who they book in the, you know, the remaining spots because it will be, it is speaking to a different audience, like you're saying, you know. It wouldn't surprise me if there were,

if networks were cutting away from the actual speeches because there is, it does seem less, it does seem less sort of consequential in the moment. If it's pre-recorded or being airing straight to a, you know, iPhone in somebody's office or whatever. I mean, that wouldn't shock me. But I think that you're right. It will end up feeling not a lot different. And it'll probably get a lot, like a shocking amount of viewership, too.

Yeah. And I guess that's what I mean. It's going to be the same speech. But without the crowd and without the show. you just actually just don't air it, right? Because you're like, well, now it's, now it's boring,

even though the content of the speech is exactly what it was in 2016. That's just funny to me. David, I've been interested in the idea of what a movie critic is going to do. Oh, yeah. Now that movie theaters here in California

ain't opening for a really long time. So I called Justin Chang, awesome critic over the LA Times. Here he is. Justin Chang is an awesome movie critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's, fresh air. And if this were a pandemic free world, right now he'd be polishing the lead on his

review of tenant. But thanks to an announcement by California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday for the foreseeable future, Chang is going to be a movie critic without movie theaters, which is a state of being he's here to talk about today. Thanks so much for coming on, Justin. Thank you so much for having me, Brian. What was the last movie you saw in a theater? The last movie I saw in a theater was Mulan actually. Wow. They had the premiere. They were ready to release it. This was back in March, of course. And I remember going and feeling, you know,

it was just about to sink in. And I remember feeling a little bit queasy, uneasy, uneasy, you know, hundreds, thousands of people and, you know, crammed into the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. But it hadn't fully, I think it was just a matter a few days. I think I was maybe on my way home and thinking, they may cancel this movie. They may postpone this movie. And it's been funny because having seen that and of course, you know, nothing's been written about the movie yet because it did not come out. And I know

along with Tenet, of course, those are like the two big Hollywood temples that will be the sign that everything is okay and back to normal, which of course, as we know, is not going to be anytime soon. It's funny with Mulan because just a in terms of movie critic embargo terms. It's almost like you have this secret knowledge, but you know, but cannot be shared publicly. Like the embargo is never going to end.

Yeah. It's, I can't remember. I mean, obviously, all of everything in the situation feels unprecedented. And I can't remember a situation where we all,

you know, and this, you know, premiere was obviously well attended. I think they were screening it concurrently with that for, for critics and for reporters. So a lot of us have seen it.

And we're all just sort of, sort of, I'm just sort of sitting on it. There are obviously more important things going on at the moment. If and when I, the movie does come out, of course, I will see it again because it has been many months since that viewing.

So it's March. And every journalist who had a job that was fundamentally changed by the coronavirus, had a, what do I do now moment? Yeah. What was your, what do I do now moment like? Gosh,

and it's been, because it's been like four months now, it's changed. You know, we've all sort of, adapted to, or we've had to adapt, some of us better than others, to the new reality of our work and what it means to be a movie critic when there are not no new movies, but far fewer new movies than there were originally planned to be. And far fewer movies, I would say,

just studio movies. There are still a lot of independent films, a lot of international films that are being opened, going primarily to streaming platforms. And I sort of leaned into that when all of this sort of happened. You know, I was, I kind of tried to reassure myself. There's still a lot of movies. There's still a lot to see and write about. And that has actually been fairly true. I haven't, you know, some weeks are thinner than others, but, you know, this has always been true even when under normal circumstances. There's always movies that sort of slip under the radar and that you, as a critic, really want to draw attention to those, to those films. And so now maybe it's a little easier to draw attention.

to them. But of course, to answer your question more succinctly, Brian, I mean, early on, we were all writing our, you know, 25 movies to stream lists, you know, and kind of, you know, and even then there was already this, this hope against hope that this would all be, you know, temporary and that it would just be for a while. Here's something to tide you over for the few weeks or maybe a few months. And it's really, it is, of course, heartbreaking to know that while it would have been bad, it could have been much better. And so we are, I feel like we are in the long haul right now. And it's, it's tricky. And it's also kind of fun to try to, because this is such a, this is such a strange situation. Nobody knows how it's going to end exactly.

And we're all just, you know, as critics, we're also, we're not just critics, we're we're sort of responding to the moment. We're trying to capture a snapshot of just what this weird time is like in movie going and movie watching rather. We're not movie going because we're all just in our living rooms. So there's two parts of theater's not being open. First part you mentioned, which is that the studios have delayed just about every major movie. And I kind of went through your tote board here in the last couple of months. You've missed Black Widow, Wonder Woman, quiet place to the French dispatch, apparently the 74th movie and the Saw franchise, which I I didn't even know what was coming out.

I didn't know that either. It was on some list I saw. You have reviewed Palm Springs, Hamilton, surely, defy the five bloods, less promisingly a Scooby-Doo thing, and the John Stewart, Steve Carrell political satire or attempt thereof. That's not bad.

That's actually better or more comparable than I probably would have thought otherwise. Yeah. And there's things like trolls, World Tour, which of course set off this whole thing because, you know, the exhibitors were mad that Universal released this movie that was supposed to be a big theatrical release and put it on, put it out for streaming instead. But you're right, it's it's not that bad. And, you know, this past week in particular, everyone was kind of scratching their heads like, wow, this was a good week. We had Palm Springs,

we had the old guard, we had things like, I haven't even seen relic yet, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, independent movies, independent horror movies that I'm very eager to catch up with. So again, it's like, I think this is very interesting because, you know, I think part of this, too, is, you know, we probably maybe can talk about the fact that the Academy has sort of pushed back its, you know, its Oscar dates to like April. And so with the expectation that there will be a lot more movies flooding theaters in like January, February, March. And will they, who knows, who knows what state will be in by then. But I think, you know, look, streaming, I don't like watching movies in my living room. I desperately crave the theater. I miss it as much as anyone does.

And yet, I feel that, I don't know, I feel grateful that we've had these, you know, a new Spike Lee movie on Netflix, you know, which I wish that movie is beautifully shot too. I really wish I'd seen it in the theater. Am I still grateful that I got to see it? Yes, I'm grateful for the old guard, a movie that is on Netflix and so was maybe never going to be in theaters or at least in more than one or two theaters. And it's funny because that's a big,

that's a comic book-based superhero movie, the kind that I'd actually want to see with a packed house, and it's a very fresh example of that genre. But am I grateful that it's, here. Yes, absolutely. And I almost wish, I'm not saying I wish that everyone would just go to streaming.

But I do feel that in a way, I don't know, I, I, I'm really, really excited to get back to theaters. I do feel that if you are, you know, everyone has to sort of make the compromise, I think, of, you know, watching new movies in an environment where it's harder to. give it to your full attention. It's harder to be immersed and drawn into it. And yet, I almost feel like this doesn't have to go down as a disappointing year in movies. It's weird. I actually feel like, and I'm hopeful that a lot of the smaller films, films like Kelly Reichardt's First Cow, films like never rarely sometimes always, both of which actually opened first cow very briefly in theaters before lockdown happens began. So, this is a real opportunity, I think, to highlight those in a time when the studios are kind of retreating and, you know, we look at these next few months, I really see it.

And this is maybe where I see my job is really looking at and highlighting those gems, you know. Usually you describe them as like little gems and they're not so little. I think they loom very large now. Let's talk a little bit about the experience of the physical theater. Why, as a critic, do you like seeing movies in that space? Oh gosh. I mean, it's funny because I think that when you hear, and I don't want to be one of those critics who rhapsodizes about the purity of the theatrical experience because, you know, it's not so pure for one. It's, you know, and when people talk about this nowadays, people are more want to kind of roll their eyes and complain about people on their phones, people making a mess and chewing their popcorn loudly and just the hell that is other people

when you go to a movie or when nowadays. And yet, and yet, yes, I share all those complaints. And yet I do kind of want to rhapsodize a little bit because I just find that the movie theater really does take me out of myself and put me in an entirely different headspace. And even if it's not an escapist movie per se, And of course, we're lacking that escapism this summer.

I feel, you know, even if it's whatever the movie is, I do feel like I am escaping just my present circumstances, which is not something you can do, especially now when everyone is working from home. And I have a three-year-old who's running around all the time, and she's a very well-behaved three-year-old, but it's, you know, I can't just, I don't know, I'm not throwing on like a Pazilini movie

or a Cronenberg movie while she's around. As much as I would like to, whatever. just to name two examples. But it's, it really, and this is especially true of, you know, it's funny. One movie that I reviewed this past, over a few months,

was Vitalina Varela, the new Pedro Costa movie, which I was very fortunate to see at Sundance in a beautiful, dark in the theater and able to give that very beautiful, very challenging film my full and undivided attention. I rewatched, of course, before reviewing it,

and I washed off a screener link. And for a movie that does not have a lot of narrative footholds for you, it was actually really, it looked pretty good on my home screen, but the difference is it's still night and day, right? And I wrote in my review that you would have to, you know, please, if you watch this movie and I do recommend it, turn off all your lights and give yourself the time, you know, just keep your phone off and everything.

I am susceptible to those things too. I watch what, you know, I watch what the lights on. I sometimes am looking at my phone. I'm trying not to do these things, especially when I'm working. But you know, Brian, it's hard. It's hard to put up. And so this is why I treasure, you know, in the theater, I would, I would be able to shut those things off. Just more complete.

Your phone's off. Your kid is somewhere else. There's like a physical experience. It's funny because A.O. Scott, the film critic over at the New York Times, wrote about this recently. And he said, reviewing a movie at home is almost like reading a book or reviewing a book, I should say. Because you can go back, right? You can go, wait, I just miss that.

Let me, let me rewind. Or you watch the movie once and you can just start it over again and watch it one more time, which you don't, something you can't do if you're in a screening room. Yeah, it's very true. And sometimes you can't do it in a screening room. And just sort of the way things are set up, you know, sometimes if it's not a big studio movie, if it's a smaller movie, I, sometimes I would go and watch it in a press screening and I would then request a screener just for whatever, fact checking, if I want to check a

line from the script or if I want to verify some plot detail that I might have missed. So even then you could sort of do the homework version and yeah, rewind and kind of, but yeah, and it's funny now being able to do that with like the Five Bloods, being able to pause and segment the movie, which is of course, you know, never a great way to go about it. I just reviewed this past week, you know, the painted bird, this very beautifully shot. very punishingly brutal World War II drama, which I didn't see in the theater, and I really wish I had.

And, you know, the, it's the definition of a movie to watch in the theater. And it's kind of funny because, you know, when that movie was playing festivals last year, it, you know, it inspired, it reportedly inspired a lot of walkouts just because it's such a harrowing film to watch here. You sort of have the luxury of pausing or fast-forwarding.

I did not do those. Well, I sometimes paused if I needed a, you know, a break or something. But yeah, you can control the viewing experience in a way that is not great for that experience. Do you think it leads you to write different reviews or write your reviews differently? I try not to. And you're always trying to recapture that sense of immersion. You're trying to simulate the experience of watching the theater as best you can.

But then it makes you think, too, about my colleagues who write about television. who are used to this. You know, it's like they are always just watching it at home. And that meeting, you know, the difference between the two media and, which of course, as we know, is getting bluer all the time. I do try to write about it. It's funny. It's a way of kind of maybe preserving some semblance of normalcy at the same time

because we are trying to document this strange moment. It's a chance to get a little more personal in your reviews. I dare say, and more personal in your essays. And not that I'm, you know, I'm not a really a diaristic kind of critic or anything. And nothing, no shade to those who are. I just, it's just not me. And I'm not, I wouldn't be very good at it if I tried.

But there is a chance to note, you know, everything strikes us differently these days. You know, the stories we're watching, of course, strike us differently. Lines of dialogue from older movies play weirdly now when you think about just this time of corn, and pandemic and protest too, everything that has happened in 2020.

So it actually, you know, sometimes I do try to write a little more honestly and just not a little more honestly, but just more directly about, this is weird, isn't it everyone? You know, and it's like this is, and yeah, watching this, you know, I don't think I've put that,

you know, mentioned the whole, you know, watching in my living room or anything, but definitely you need to have the freedom to let the room. real world shape your response to things and to write about that response because, of course, that's what's happening. Well, for sure. I noticed that you wrote this in your review of Palm Springs, arriving now at a moment of

mass quarantine. Max Barbicow and Andy Sierra's vision of stasis and isolation can't help but take on suggestive new layers. So it plays differently, right? It's not only the fact that you're watching it at home, but we're watching it during a quarantine. And of course, that's in your mind somewhere. Yeah.

And that was a movie where. I did not see Palm Springs at Sundance where it first premiered, where I know coronavirus was kind of on the horizon, but nobody really, very few people expected that we would be here right now. And so they wouldn't have necessarily had those associations when they were watching that movie for the first time. And now, and it's funny, I don't know if it makes, I'm thinking it necessarily makes, I like the movie a lot,

I don't think it makes it better or worse. It just plays a little different. And maybe it does incline you to watch that movie more now. Or maybe it pushes you away. I mean, the movie is very charming and fun, but maybe you feel like, I don't, this does not sound like something I want to watch right now. Yeah, I don't want any more layers to the coronavirus. Exactly.

The layers bad enough. Get away. Can we remove the layers, please? Yeah. Our pal Scott Tobias tweeted or maybe sub-tweeted this earlier in the week. Halfway decent films released directly to streaming are given way too much critical latitude in my opinion. Is he right?

Do you think? I saw that tweet from. And I love Scott. And I don't think he's entirely wrong. I think that because I felt, I don't know if I read that. I don't know if I felt sub-tweeted because I, I imagine he was talking about, I know he was talking about the old guard because I know he wasn't a fan. And it's kind of funny because I like the old guard a lot. I don't know if I love it. And I do see, you know, there are there are flaws in that movie that I took care to try to note in my review. despite, while also very much admiring and recommending it. And I don't know what, I don't, I know he's talking about that movie. I don't know what else he might be talking about. But I don't know. That's a funny thing.

I mean, it's, I do think it's sort of a response maybe to this past week, having been kind of this glut of interesting, even if you don't particularly like them, interesting movies to grapple with. And so it does sort of feel like this, sudden, you know, cornucopia of, you know, of riches or something. But I think that, I mean, I don't know, it's interesting to look at even the reaction to something like the Spike Lee film, which is, you know, kind of a mess, but kind of a great mess, where we inclined to embrace that

movie more because it did feel like an oasis in this desert all of a sudden, maybe, maybe not. And I think I read as many qualified, you know, the critical reaction was largely positive, but I read some qualified takes as well, as well as, you know, gushing raves. And I tried to sort of position myself kind of in between those. So I think Scott is a brilliant critic. He is on, and as always he is on to something. But at the same time, I also think, and I think Scott doesn't as well as anyone, it all does come down to taste.

And I think that, I think that people who love whatever movies are, being referenced here. I do think they're absolutely sincere. I don't think that they're, you know, overcorrecting necessarily for for the circumstances. I've been thinking about this question in terms of sports writers because we're about to have sports next week, amazingly. A bunch of sports writers are not going to be there because of safety concerns, money concerns, whatever it is. And they're going to be essentially watching a game on television and writing about it, reviewing off TV as you were. And my intention is, is I'd much rather have them there in a safe, no, non-coronavirus world.

But at the same time, I don't know that most readers will really be able to tell the difference between a really sharp sports writer watching television and one at the game. There certainly will be differences in the experience, but I don't know that it will come through. So I want to ask you the movie version of this question. Sure. You got a screener of Tenet today from Warner Bros. And you watched it at home. this is a summer movie designed to be watching the theater,

and you reviewed it, do you think readers would be able to tell the difference? I mean, I think in the case of something like Tenet, you would be, I don't see myself writing a review of that movie that doesn't acknowledge, you know, the circumstances surrounding it.

So I don't think I would even write a review that tried to, to pass off like, oh, I saw this in a theater, you know. It's so, so I guess maybe I'm not, could I do it in such a way? Could I do it in, you know, it's such a way that if I wanted to, that just sort of pretended none of this was happening and just treated it as a movie, as a movie that I, where I'm not telling you necessarily the circumstances. Maybe I could. And if I got that screener, of course, you know, you'd want to, like, as with many Christopher Nolan movies, you would want to watch it more than once. You don't usually have the luxury

of doing that when you're just reviewing it for the first time, but maybe this time, depending on the embargo or something, you would actually have the time to watch it more than once because his movies are generally designed for multiple viewings, and there's lots of, because they're puzzles by and large. So,

but I think with, given the role that Tenet has assumed and given Nolan's place in the industry and his sort of grandiose showmanship as the guy who wants to bring movies back to theaters in a big way, and frankly, and I have to say, and I love Christopher Nolan, I very much respect his movies, and his, you know, his championship of the art of cinema, but, but, but, but, but, I think that they should hold,

I think they should hold the movie until such time as it is truly deemed safe enough for them again. And I don't think it matters whether this movie or some other movie is given that kind of messianic role of bringing us back to theaters. And so I kind of, and I think that Warner Brothers actually gets it. And obviously, you know, Nolan is a very powerful figure in commands a lot of, you know, can push a studio to do more than it ordinarily would. And yet I think as we keep seeing these two, these Moulon Tenet, Moulon Tenet keep getting postponed week after week, I think, I, I, I hope that they will not allow for a situation where people are where moviegoers are putting themselves in danger. So one more before you go and so that no one will accuse us of rhapsodizing about movie theaters. Because I'm with you.

I don't want to be the sports writer who goes to Fenway Park and falls on his knees. But I do love movie theaters. And that is one of the like that and used bookstores are like the two spaces, physical spaces I have missed the most, I think, during the coronavirus. I miss going to the Egyptian, right? I miss going the arc line. I miss going to these cool places we get to go to in L.A. But so we don't rhapsodize. You wrote about this,

Bridge of Spies, 2015 Stephen Spielberg movie. Well, you tell us, just so we have a reality of movie going, what happened to you near the climactic scene of Bridge of Spies? Well, yes, not and not to,

maybe we're past the statute of limitations on Bridge of Spies. I think we're okay. If you haven't seen it, you know, it's the scene of Mark Rylance is about to cross the bridge of spies. checkpoint Charlie and Berlin. And I don't think this person could have timed it better if he tried, but right at the climax, I think right as he's about to take that first step,

this gentleman seated a few seats down from me, who I think staggered into the theater like about halfway through the movie. And you could smell, he was inebriated, you know, and... Always a bad sign. Yeah, it was, you know, and this was a press screening. This wasn't just like, yeah, that's the weird thing too. And it wasn't just by a ticket public showing of the film. And right at that climactic moment,

he just basically kind of like pitches over, kind of forward and vomits on the floor of our row. And miraculously, I don't think anyone was sprayed or impacted and, you know, was, you know, was, you know, was, hit by flying barf, but you heard it, you knew exactly what happened and you just the smell of alcohol became instantly more overpowering. And so yeah, and to this day, I have not gone back and rewatch the end of Fridge of Spice, which I probably should do to give that movie, which I like perfectly fine, to do it justice. I should do that. I'm going to put that on my list for tonight.

Finish Bridge of Spines again. Yeah, and we just, I think we stuck, it wasn't, I was there with some screening companions, and we all just called, oh, my God, it's so gross. And I don't know if we moved over a little bit, you know, I don't know, if I were a better person, probably would have tried to help this poor guy. He wasn't alone either, though. He had some friends with him, so I trusted he was okay. Wow.

But then we just kind of, and as the movie ended, we did not stay for the credits. As we normally do, we just immediately exited stage right because he had pute stage left. that is but yeah no i've written i probably should have a moratorium on sharing that writing about that story again because i think i've written about it once or twice now already but um it was a very memorable thing and it is indeed something to remember every time you want to rhapsodize about the purity of the theater going experience all right justin chang you can read him in the l. a times where he will be doxing critics who stagger late into screenings in an inebriated state but not overrating any movies that are released in streaming.

Justin, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, Brian. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. All right, time for David Schumacher. Guess is a strain pun headline. Okay.

Monday's headline, which is worth a groan, about Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's sentence was Roger Clemency. Today's headline comes from Jake Kirkland and James Denison. It's from The Guardian in the UK. You know the tale, David, of Brazilian president, Haire Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro denied the severity of COVID-19 that actually tested positive for it himself earlier this month. While in quarantine at the presidential palace,

Bolsonaro went outside to feed a RIA, like the bird, the Ibu of South America. The Ria. And the Ria, David, bit President Bolsonaro. There are photos of him shaking his hand, like, ah! Wow. So a Ria makes a kind of, of political statement, what was the Guardians strained pun headline?

Oh my God. Is it, is it Ria? Ria, uh, Ria de Janeiro, Ria, Ria, I'd have no idea. Uh, Ria. David, welcome to the, welcome to the, Oh man, I'm off today. This is a popular tweet. Welcome to the,

an unlikely person becomes anti-Trump. Welcome to the Ria. Rea. Welcome to the Re-existence. That is the. Oh, God. Oh, my God. It's actually just the re-existence.

Bird pecks Bolsonaro during coronavirus quarantine. That is fantastic. That's good. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica. Cervantes. We're back Monday with more

lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.