The Press Box - Steve Bannon, David Remnick, and the New Yorker Festival | The Press Box (Ep. 520)

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss The New Yorker's decision to invite — and then disinvite — former Trump aide Steve Bannon to its annual festival, and what that says about covering the right and the problem with "ideas" festivals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly. Here's what's going on in the ringer universe for the rest of the week. Kevin Clark's writing about how the Eagles took over the NFL. That'll be up on the site on Thursday. We've got a new Chicago edition of Danny Chow's Food Diary, Chowdown, also out on Thursday. And you can watch our live NFL wins pool from Tuesday with Bill, Sean, Mal, and a ton of other ringer staffers up on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. And don't forget about our newest ringer football podcast, dual throughout with Ran Rusillo. That drops on Tuesday nights wherever you get your podcasts. The Pressbox is the media podcast where you're not allowed to hold an ideas festival. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer.

And David, this is what we at the Ringer call an emergency podcast because we're going to take the week off for Labor Day. And then the whole New Yorker Festival slash David Remnick slash Steve Bannon's story became a thing. And you sent me an email saying what? man now you're putting me on the spot I said hey maybe we should just do a mini emergency podcast about Steve Bannon a lot of stuff has happened this week that would merit inclusion in a press box podcast

but Steve Bannon and the New Yorker festival kind of seemed like something we couldn't not talk about yeah we're not going to get into the layoffs at the outline we're not going to get into Bob Woodward that's that's next week's show we'll cover that yeah we're not going to do the overwork Twitter joke of the week which if you were wondering

was going to be the video of Joe Biden jogging during a campaign event in Pennsylvania and everyone tweeting he's running and also tweeting the New York Times column by Brett Stevens titled Now Twitter edits the New Yorker and everyone tweeting, okay I'm updating my bio so thanks to David Oberti.

So we're not doing the overword Twitter joke even though I already did. All right David, New Yorker Festival. Should we start with a quick recap of the last two days of hostilities? Yeah, please go ahead. All right. So David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, had been talking to Steve Bannon, who we know as Trump's consigliary to the alt-right, about an interview.

He'd been talking to Bannon about this for some time, perhaps in print or on one of the New Yorkers' quote-unquote radio podcast. And per the New York Times, on July 2nd, a producer working with the magazine. By the way, already a sentence there, a producer working with the magazine. We truly do live in the 21st century. emailed Mr. Bannon to say that because they had not yet made something work, they would instead like to host him at the New Yorker Festival in October. Quote, how about we make an event of it, the email to Mr. Bannon said. Pause on that word event, because we're going to get back to that.

It was announced on Monday that Bannon would headline the festival, I believe the New York Times is the first publication to use that word, and that David is when the shitstorm started, the kind of high middlebrow culture types whom the New Yorker writers tend to interview at the festival were turned off and they began pulling out. That list includes Jud Appetow, John Malaney, Hassan Monage, Jim Carrey, Boots Riley, Patton Oswald.

There were probably others. And then there was a second insurrection by New Yorker writers who were upset that Bannon was invited to the festival. Those include Catherine Schultz, Michael Schulman, Katie Waldman, Roxanne Gay, who was working on his story for the website and who tweeted,

I hate having a brain. So after thinking it over and talking with the staff, Remnick calls Bannon to cancel and then he writes in an email to his staff. This is Remnick. I've changed my mind. There is a better way to do this. Our writers have interviewed Steve Bannon for the New Yorker before. And if the opportunity presents itself, I'll interview him in a more traditionally journalistic setting as we first discussed and not on stage. And now we are at the point, David, in a journalistic controversy where we are all piling on a Brett Stevens.

column. That's kind of like, there's different mile markers in a journalistic shitstorm. When we pile on the Brett Stevens column, I feel we're almost to the finish line. We're just, probably having the press box about it is actually the last step. So here we are. What is fascinating to be about this is how many people are doing an end zone dance about Remnick and the New York are backing down. You've got the people who want a no platform, Steve Bannon, and all the elements of the all right, you've got people who are sort of queasy about the whole idea of festivals and performances. And then you've got like conservatives who feel that, you know, all of journalism is taking its cues from lefty Twitter who are taking a bow because they've been proven right.

So they say once again. So I think we should just untangle all this. What do you think of the idea of it's never okay to interview Steve Bannon, which is an idea I saw we see it all the time, but I saw it circulating Twitter again after this. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm going to untangle the entangling a little bit because there's two different aspects to this. There is the, there is the sort of PR nightmare and the question of ideology.

I don't know if I'd say the PR nightmare and the ideology nightmare, but these are, you know, these are kind of, you can kind of break these down separately, although it's all tangled up. I think that there was probably a version of Steve Bannon at the New Yorker Festival that would have raised, that would have been less of a problem. I think from a purely crass PR perspective, calling him the headliner and announcing him last as if this was some grand unveiling as the last day of the Christmas calendar or something. It was just really, really poorly done because it's not just about Bannon. It's also just this sort of masturbatory element of the New Yorker itself, right? That like we, David Rimnick interviewing Bannon would be the great draw. So there's like this New Yorker Festival Advent calendar.

And when you get to the final compartment, it's the godfather of the alt-right. Oh my gosh. We got Boots Riley on the 13th of December and Steve Bannon. Yes. It's not, okay, I think that there is a legitimate argument to be made that you never interview Steve Bannon, or at least you never interview him in such a way that you are putting him in the spotlight in a position to espouse or argue for his more problematic ideals, or just his ideas in general. I think that there's an honest intellectual argument to be made for that. And, but I think that the bigger issue with the New Yorker is not, I mean, we'll get into a lot of this, but it's not even so much whether or not they approach that with clean conscious or, I mean, whatever, but that they so misread their own audience when it comes to the question of platforming him. So I think that's an interesting question to go to the audience thing,

Because I agree that the kind of people who live in media Twitter and lefty Twitter generally, probably a lot of them oppose the idea of hearing from Steve Bannon in any form. But let's separate it out and say that the kind of people who go to the New Yorker Festival, who plunk down 59 bucks for the ticket, don't you think that includes a sizable number of, let us say, slightly older types who want to see David Reds? You know, hold him to account and ask that, you know, that'll big at some, some tough questions. Yeah. And show on stage.

Like, I think, I think there's an element of that in the audience that's going to say, this is what I want out of this exchange. It's important to, yeah, it's important to say that, that presumably David Remick knows his audience broadly or knows the audience of the New Yorker better than anybody else, right? I mean, this is his job to know this. The audience for the New Yorker Festival is a different thing, is a different animal than the audience of the magazine. If it's, you know, there's certainly overlapping circles in the Venn diagram, but this is, you know, this is specifically citizens of New York, specifically, you know, disposable income, disposable time. You know, this is a very, this is a very particular crowd. And by the way, that's actually three audiences. You're saying New Yorker Festival audience, people who read the New Yorker. And then I would say woke lefty Twitter that is generally like, likes the New Yorker aspires to write for the New Yorker, but may not actually be exactly either of those first two. Yes, yeah, that's great. But talking about aspiring, I mean, there's, and this ties back into the question of audience, Rimnik knows his audience, but there's a difference between your audience and your perceived role in like the media stratosphere and whether, and I think you could, you could imagine that Rimnik felt an obligation to do this on some level or in another situation would feel a certain obligation that is separate from his obligation to his audience, right? Like, that there is a, that there is a journal. We are the New Yorker. We must do this thing. We must pursue this story that is separate from specifically what the audience would want to read on a given week. Right? I mean, I think so.

But I think that when you're talking about the New Yorker Festival, yeah, you can imagine that. I used to work at Politics and Pros bookstore in D.C. This, you know, David Remnick talks to Steve Bannon is a thing that theoretically would have happened there, whatever the, whatever the early 2000s version of that was, would have could have been a Q&A there. Yeah, Paul Wolfowitz. But a lot of this does, but I could also imagine half of the, or two-thirds of the staff of politics and pros walking out in protest of Steve Bannon. Like, I could imagine this, you know, that all of these things are plausible. There's also a thing about the New Yorker Festival. I mean, listen, the audience of the New Yorker festival certainly has some of that old money New York crowd, but it also has a very, I mean,

it's also speaking to a very young, very vital, very Twitter-friendly audience or else, why the fuck are you inviting John Mullaney onto the stage? You know, I mean, it's not, there, the, the, the audiences see I mean I remember when I first moved New York you would look at the audiences for this and outside of the New Yorker masthead names like Malcolm Gladwell who you know who you understand why they were there there were a lot of these that seemed sort of so small

I kind of was kind of hard to imagine how they deserve merited placement on the festival but they all sold out in 30 seconds you know I mean it was it is a very very dedicated specific audience and yeah I mean I think that all kind of feeds into, I mean, that is separate,

like you said, from the Twitter audience, but it all feeds into the reaction. Let me, let me circle back to the idea of interviewing Bannon. And we're putting aside the idea of where you're interviewing him.

Just the idea of we don't talk to Steve Bannon anymore. We don't talk to Stephen Miller. We don't talk to, you know, reactionary or racist, bigot, Trump types anymore. And by the way,

I've seen this extended to, we don't talk to me to perpetrators anymore. We don't give them oxygen, right? We don't, you know, participate. I just totally reject that idea. And I don't think that that's really what's at stake here. And if that's what people are getting out of this, you know, Remnick said when he was talking about how he was going to conduct the interview, this was actually before it was canceled,

he told the New York Times, I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation. The audience itself, by its presence, puts a certain pressure on the conversation that an interview alone doesn't do, you can't jump on and off the record. But again, putting the festival idea of the side, I just think that there's nothing, there's nothing inherently wrong with talking to these people. The problem people have is almost always how the article is handled or how the interview is handled. If you're in New York Times. Yeah, it's like if you're mad, it's because somebody did a kiss-assie access-driven interview that said, oh, I'm, I got an audience with

Steve Bannon. Let me share his thoughts without. any pushback, any selection, any skepticism, any, any, any, you know, parentheses, boy, that was, boy, this is, this talk about demographic sure is, sure is bigoted and racist, right? That, that's what people get mad about. And I think most of the time. And I just think, you know, the people who cover the White House and cover the Trump administration on a daily basis, I would, I would guess to say that all of them talk to Steve Bannon, all the ones at whose calls he is still returning. Because as we know, people said, well, he's not even in the White House anymore. Well, we know that, first of all, every Trump advisor turns out to be a former Trump advisor. I think we've said that on this podcast before. But every former Trump advisor also turns out to be still a current Trump advisor because Trump is still calling. And I would, without exactly knowing, I would venture to say that's the case here. In fact, we've read that Bannon still occupies that nebulous title of informal advisor to the president.

So, of course, you would talk to Steve Bannon. Doesn't mean you have to quote him. Doesn't mean you have to share his ideas. But who would, I don't understand who would be covering politics on a daily basis or even, you know, on a magazine and a sort of magazine style like Remnant who would rule that out. Part of, I mean, part of, I think, what's so surprising to me, and again, this is just a very in the weeds, you know, I don't know if this is too inside baseball, but, I mean, because this is a serious issue. But part of what's so surprising to me is we know that they're talking to him all the time. I mean, Bannon's basically on a press junket right now and that the New Yorker would, I mean, it would seem like, again,

just from like a marketing perspective, it seems weird that they would even want him to be on, to occupy that position on the stage, given the fact that he's also doing the same thing for the economist. You know, at the exact same time that he just did that New York Times article, that he's so available, that part of it that seems kind of so mind-boggling to me. I don't quite understand it.

Yes, he's the opposite of a new- exclusive. I think in the time story that I was just quoting from, it said that Bannon was at the Venice Film Festival, where he was with Errol Morris appearing at the premiere of a movie that Errol Morris made about interviewing Steve Bannon. So it's actually, there's another objection, which is this is the least exclusive interview that you could possibly have and who would want to see yet another interview with Steve Bannon. I'm going to get to the second issue here, because this is actually much more persuasive to me, which is, The problem here is not Steve Bannon. The problem here is the whole idea of this ideas festival that now much derided term. Where it is not a, it is less a journalistic interview and sort of bleeds into becoming a kind of co-performance or duet, right? Yeah. Where you have a writer on stage and their subject sitting next to them. And that that's actually what people are objecting to here.

What do you make of that? I think there's definitely some truth to that. I think that I think that as with most things on the internet all these things bleed together in a way that makes the discussion a little bit unfruitful but yeah I mean listen

there are I mean you were talking I think before we went on the air about some obvious examples of these sorts of interview like New Yorker profiles that led to these you know the stage show version of it you know I mean the New York New Yorker Festival has been going on forever. I mean, as someone who does more podcasts than, you know,

then my life would, you know, it really has time to afford. The idea of live podcasts are still a little bit mind-boggling to me, just going, but there is a huge, there are a huge number of people that want to go out and see, you know, a stage version of the thing they've heard or read already.

Right. No, that's true. Though I think it's, like, slightly different when it's, you know, if you get the crooked media guys together and put them in a big auditorium versus, you know, a journalist and somebody they are interviewing or may write about in the future and put them together on stage and charge $59 for it. Do you think it's because it's analytically, like there is a lack of journalistic integrity or because it pulls back the curtain on the real enterprise or is it both?

I think it because it pushes the journalist into quasi-journalistic territory where nobody's quite sure what we're doing. I mean, here's some context about this. John Seabrook, who a New Yorker writer, still a New Yorker writer, to my knowledge, wrote this book called No Brow years ago. Oh, yeah. And he was talking about the kind of end of the Tina Brown era when Brown was pursuing this, these kind of panels, these kind of synergistic to use the very now outdated phrase, panels with Disney where, you know, it would be held at a Disney resort.

And it was kind of a, you know, as he described it very vividly, a kind of combination of old, you know, sort of New Yorker journalistic highbrow integrity, you know, kind of coming into this kind of queasy tango with Disney money and marketing and everything else and kind of getting mixed up into one thing. The New Yorker Festival is a version of that idea that nobody is very queasy about anymore because we live in a world where, one, the New Yorker Festival has been really successful. And two, we also that magazines need money to succeed. And if something makes money, then I think you put aside, when you talk about profiles becoming panel,

so just a couple that have pulled out of the air, June 2012, Tad Friend writes a very good profile of Ben Stiller and the New Yorker in the magazine. That October, he interviews Ben Stiller at the New Yorker Festival on stage. Tickets cost 35 bucks. This year, Emily Nussbaum, who's our excellent TV critic, reviewed the show The Good Fight in June in the magazine. she is going to interview the Good Fight star Christine Baransky at the New Yorker Festival in October. And that costs $59 to attend. Now, again, I'm not somebody who is, you know, wants to be Mr. Journalism Professor here. But there is something if on the one hand we are all trying to, you know, be journalists and, you know, say like, I'm a critic.

I'm a culture writer or I'm a critic. and I am taking my best shot at these people within the confines of what we know is journalism. And then I am going to a stage show where I'm charging the audience to watch me do what I do in my day job on stage. That's just weird. It's really weird.

I just wrote a profile of Joe Tessitore. It'd be weird if at the Ringer Festival next month I was interviewing Joe Tessitore on stage for $59 bucks. It wouldn't be surprising for someone to ask you to do it if there were a Ringer Festival. It wouldn't. But I'm just saying we've all kind of just, we've all kind of just moved into this world of festivals and panels. And I think the Bannon thing is something that makes us think about the whole thing again.

Because Bannon is an extreme example, right? Ben Stiller and Christine Borensky are not going to be mouthing alt-right, you know, ideology from the stage. But that doesn't mean that the exchange is completely different. Yeah. I mean, I think that it was, I think that it is, I think that there's a big element and this sort of combines the first and the second argument is that it's, it's, it's, there's a huge element of this where it's just. Rimneck or the New Yorker sort of falling into this, this trap of self parity. And I think that, you know, I'm not all, I don't know exactly how to define the loudest voices on Twitter that were condemning this because I don't think it's one group. but if you want to take like like the far,

far left, you know, social media active part of, of, you know, of the discourse. You know, I'm not always sympathetic to that. I'm not always sympathetic to like the Chapo Trap House cause, but regardless of what you think, whether you think banon is Satan incarnate or just a political hack or both, you know, Rimnik fell ass back back.

Yeah, exactly. Rimnik fell ass backwards into this perception of him that, or, and if people like that, And if people like him, I mean, it's not specific to David Remnick because he's widely respected or whatever. Because if he had all grasped the severity of what the reaction was going to be, of the potential response, he wouldn't have done it or at least not done it in the way that he did. Because if you're so detached from the conversations that people are having, from the work from the, from the, from, you know, the political discourse as to think of it only in terms of horse races or if you're, you know, if you're going to say he's an important point. political force separate and above from all the other shit, you know, and digging into that is important, having this conversation is important. That's exactly the problem, right? Because you, because if you, if you think,

if you think that Bannon is legitimately a white supremacist, you would not invite him onto the stage, no matter whether or not he was already an established political force, whatever, whatever, you know, the, the reasoning was in Remnick statement, you know, if you think that he's a white supremacist, you wouldn't invite him. If you realize that other people think he's a white supremacist and you just happen to disagree, you would have assigned that piece in the New Yorker already, right? If you think that, if you think that,

that there, if you think that this is what, if you, this is so confusing. If you honestly don't, entering the hall of mirrors here, but go ahead, yes. Continue. Inviting him up on stage like that is what you,

is what you do if you think that there is some objectionable politics or something behind, an agenda that merits some sort of debate, you know? I mean, I just don't know what the, I don't know about that, by the way. I think, I think it's more of like man in the news. I think here's an important figure in politics rather than he's right about some things and wrong about 90% of things. I don't even know if the thinking gets that far. I think it's that Steve Bannon is an important guy. But don't you think, by the way, if Remnick had interviewed him on a podcast and had what was surely to be a hard-hitting interview, had included him as part of the, interviewed him as part of the piece about the Trump,

a sure to be skeptical piece about the Trump administration. Nobody would care. No, none of this would have happened. No, a lot of those tweets would still exist, but it would not have risen to this level for sure. I don't think, but again, if it's like Remnick, if it's Remnick grilling him in a podcast scenario, uh, rather than this kind of, again, duet on stage, I don't think anybody would care. I think that's, I think that's what they'd want people to do to ban the people who, you know, were, again, and hold anything but the no platform position. No, no, I agree. And I think that part of that relates to a conversation we've had a million times, which is that if the podcast appeared, then we would know what the, like, people would listen to the conversation before they commented on it or a lot of people would, right? This now, I mean, the way they've set it up is there's this just, it's all hypothetical. And it's all just waiting for a conversation that now will never take place.

Yeah, now we're, now we're debating, people are debating, how would David Remnick have, have, have, yes, conducted this interview that he is not in fact going to conduct. But again, when I look over the program, I see lots of this stuff, what I'm talking about. Jeffrey Tubin talks to Sally Gates, right? Boy, that's interesting. But Jeffrey Tubin writes about law for the magazine, and Sally Yates is now an important figure. So to watch Jeffrey Tubin interview Sally Yates cost you $79, right? I mean, I just, I don't know.

That's strange. Andrew Morantz, who's written some really excellent articles about media for the magazine, talks to Chris Hayes, price $59. What happens when Andrew Morantz writes about cable news for his next article in MSNBC or cable news in the time of Trump? And he's done a co-production on stage with Chris Hayes for, which you pay $59 for? And can I be old man Curtis here for just a second and broaden this critique a little bit? This is me walking down Sunset Boulevard with my walker just yelling at traffic. But I want to say it anyway, the same queasiness that I feel about the festival panel session. is something that I also feel about, let's say, podcasting when a guest is often invited

onto a podcast, and that becomes a kind of co-performance, right? We see all the time journalists have somebody on their podcast, and the first tweet is, it was such an honor to have so-and-so on my podcast. Something you'd never tweet about a print interview. You'd never say I was so honored to interview so-and-so for a story, right? But once it goes into podcast mode, somehow it again. again, it ceases to become journalism and it becomes, it may be a kind of journalistic interview, it may be interesting, but often it becomes a kind of co-production. And this is also to say,

this is not new in journalism. This is, you know, sports writers agreeing to write the athlete's memoirs, right? And lending their byline to the athlete. That's sort of what this is. This is, you know, your local sports columnist giving it to the team in the paper by day and hosting the coaches show on radio or TV by night. Yeah. It's all, but that is again, once you, once you leave the bounds and get into that territory, I think that's where things sort of get weird. There's two different.

I mean, yeah, there's the part that you're talking about, which is like the deep, hell, the deep, like the deeply held tenets of journalistic integrity, which I think are totally legitimate. There's also the, you can see this just from an audience. I mean, like, from the audience's point of view who might not care about, you know, might not care about it in the exact same way you do. They're just like, did they be most awkward about the jovial conversation

that goes on the first three minutes of the podcast? You know, I mean, like when their perception of hard-hitting journalism is like running up in a fedora with a microphone asking tough questions, you know? I mean, you don't want the cordiality,

or at least that you don't want to, even the pretense of it. But yeah, no, I mean, I think that, I mean, that's definitely an old man Curtis perspective that I've heard before, but I think there's a lot of legitimacy to it. I mean, I think that I'm not even saying it's wrong. I'm not even saying we should just cancel all this stuff.

Well, I just don't even think, I'm not even saying we should cancel this stuff. I think we should probably think about it more. And I think you're right. We've all pushed in this world thanks to technology like podcasting, right? And thanks to we all need money and we need festivals, by the way, which includes Southby, which includes those Times talks that the New York Times does. But maybe we should just think about what's happening in those exchanges. slightly harder. I mean, I guarantee that many people who are performing on stage of this festival

have made fun of like the National Review crews in their time, but at least the National Review Cruise is almost is mostly occupied by National Review staff members and they're not just like, well, I guess they're probably are the right wing equivalence of some of these people. But it's like some jokes are easy, but like you're doing you're doing exactly the same thing. It was fun, by the way, scanning the New Yorker Festival listings to find things that were completely above board, such as a master class in fact-checking. Like I think, you know, I think they're pretty safe there, right? We're not, by the way, that is a, that is, that is, let me see how much it costs, $59 for a master

class in fact-checking, where the New Yorker fact-checkers on stage will tell you how to fact-check a piece. So that, that probably does not bend any lines, right? Or, you know, they're art critic leading you on a tour of the frick, right? These are things that are very different, shall we say, for journalists to do. But that's sort of a, that's sort of this kind of, you know, here is a way to introduce our writers and staff members to the public, you know, and make some money in the whole thing. The other thing we've seen lately, and this is certainly from the right, including the aforementioned Brett Stevens, is this idea that, you know, this is for them the latest evidence of the Twitter mob, right? everybody now is in journalism that is in anti-Trump journalism or what we'd broadly classify as liberal or lefty

journalism is now taking their orders from angry people on Twitter. What do you make of that? I think it's a, you know, delicious argument from the right, you know, from a right-leaning perspective. I think it's the most Brett Stevensy. I mean, it's, you know, this is the sort of stuff that a right-wing columnist for the New York Times lives for. Because in some ways, because it has the feel of truth, and it has the feel of the confirmation of an argument that's been bubbling for quite a while without it actually being particularly true.

I mean, there's a huge difference between the New Yorker and the New Yorker Festival. That's the whole conversation that we're having right now. And also, even for the people that have the same art, I mean, listen, nobody, the New York Times publishing its Bannon piece did not, I mean, attracted a whole lot of argument or a whole lot of argument, but it didn't attract this sort of just mad ire, right? Because again, going back to the podcast, the podcast example we talked about before, the piece

already existed. You could take, you know, you could, you could hash, you could, you could break it down and and show what you disapproved of and sort of make the case they did this wrong. but it wasn't hypothetical. And so there was, you know, it felt less severe for whatever way. Also, despite the fact that, despite the fact that the New Yorker Festival is this sort of ancillary, you know, Broadway version of the New Yorker in all the ways that we've mentioned and in many more, it is in some ways more emblematic.

I don't know, emblematic is maybe not the right word. It is the sort of public face of the New Yorker in a way that just any old issue of the magazine is not, even though it's less significant or it's less purely, it's less a pure distillation of the New Yorker. It is them going up on stage and saying, and, you know, with a New Yorker logo behind them and saying this is who we are. So I can understand why it's more, you know, I understand, you know, why it gets the, why it's got the attention that it does. All of that is to say, you know, Twitter is not editing the fucking New Yorker. You know, I mean, if they, they will 100% certainly have a Remnick and Bannon interview exchange in print now because of this to prove that they can do it the right way. And I don't think Bannon not appearing at the festival should be some, you know, I don't think that should make us fear for, you know, for the musling of, you know, the death of the First Amendment or anything. Yeah, and I think for him the most, again, to take it for, to take Remnick's word for it.

I think the most persuasive thing for him was the complaints of his own writers. You and you and I have talked about this on the podcast. Magazines are living things. And if lots of people who work, who write for you and extremely talented people like Schultz and some of the other people who spoke up say, I really hate this, I'm really uncomfortable with this,

that makes a difference. And you've got to then think, you know, you've got to then look at it and say, one, was I wrong? But two, is even if I'm not exactly wrong and maybe I'd do this, I would have done this again, given the choice, is doing it going to alienate all the people I count on to put out a great magazine and a great website. And, you know, that's part of this too. I think the final funding note here for me was people who got into Remnick Legacy mode immediately by this thing. I read in one of those endless tweet things that Jead here does.

Is there a name, tweet essay? What is the name for that, for this vehicle? Threat Storm? Thread? Yeah, thread. Yeah, thread. There we go. So, anyway, this was number 10. I'm going to confess to only glancing at numbers one through nine.

But he writes, anyways, I think Remnick messed up, but he shouldn't be defined by this, to which the Atlantic's Chris Orr writes, shouldn't have his 20-year tenure than New Yorker defined by this. And anyone who thinks otherwise should be ignored indefinitely. And I mean, that's very funny to me. It's like, oh, well, how can we ever trust David Remnick after? this. I'm like, come on, man. I mean, yeah, was it Jolani Cobb that said, I think

this is from him where he said, finally one thing that is long to stir me is the binary morality of this era. It's incredible though that, I mean, the Jeet here tweet is a great example of like the binary, like, we've gotten to such a point that like trying to dismiss the binary nature of

this, of, of, of, of, of the reactions has become itself binary. Sort of like you have to, you have to, you have to give the, give, give, give yourself over to the option that his legacy may be defined by this? Like, no, nobody is saying this. And the reactions, of course, are just going to be like, yes, you are crazy for this, for this tweet that's trying to diffuse the binary situation.

It's fantastic. For an interview, he wanted to conduct on stage, but never conducted. This should be the black mark on his resume that never erased. Yeah. I kind of don't think so. And I think the New Yorker will trend a lot. I saw Isaac Chowdner had a good tweet, too, where he said that, the New Yorker's coverage of Trump has been admirable in the sense that it has refused or declined in most cases to use euphemism, right?

It is not locked, even though The New Yorker is in its own way, you know, stately magazine that, you know, has lots of oomelouts. And again, my first, my personal favorite, my personal favorite moment ever was when I wrote a story about Star Wars for the New Yorker's website. They spelled lightsaber S-A-B-R-E. I'm sorry, this is just our style. I'm pretty sure this is not what George Lucas intended. I can't. I'm sure this is a trademark term. I'm not sure.

We have stylized. It's one thing to capitalize the P in profile. It's another thing to spell lightsaber in your own particular way. That's a bridge too far for me. But the Diorker, which has been and can be in previous incarnations, as fusty as any publication in America, has been admirably. non-fusty about Trump and has, you know, attacked and investigated and, you know, editorialized and thundered against the Trump administration from Go. And that's something that figures into this,

too, because, you know, that's, you know, it's, again, I'm 100% sure that David Remnick's idea of interviewing Steve Bannon on stage was not to give Bannon more attention or to somehow vault Bannon into respectability, but was to continue what he and New Yorker writers are already doing online and then the pages of the magazine. Yeah. I still think that you can hold both things in your head at the same time that like they have had, that they, the New Yorker has a proud tradition,

even, I mean, especially in recent years of taking on the Trump administration and that inviting Steve Bannon onto the stage is a different sort of platforming that some can find objectionable and that's totally fine. Yeah, it turns out people make mistakes. Reasonably objectionable. Turns out people clear-eyed moral journalists make mistakes. I just, and it's a crazy concept, as you say, in the binary world we live in.

All right, David, have we conducted this emergency podcast thoroughly? I think so, man. We got to save our strength of the Woodward book next week because this is already. I'm getting geared up. This is already, just go, I'm going to, I'm going to turn off the mics here, and then I'm going to go and just make a number of list of the different people, different administration officials that Woodward has quoted saying

that Trump is an idiot. And I think that will pretty much take me till Monday afternoon. I think Jonathan Chate has already made that list for you. So you're going to save you some time. Saved for work by a Jonathan from work by a Jonathan Cheight column. Thanks to Chris Almeida for the research. Our producer as always is Jim Cunningham

back in more conventional form next Tuesday. See you later, David. See you, man. And come see the press box live. at the Bell House in Brooklyn. November 5th, Sunday, we're doing the same shit as always. $60. I actually meant to mention that there's a small irony that we're criticizing her question the idea of a New Yorker festival in the form of an emergency podcast.

Speaking of faintly ridiculous 21st century ideas of media, this is an emergency podcast. Why the fuck are you inviting John Mullaney onto the stage running up in a fedora with a microphone asking tough questions? We all need money and we need festival. festivals. And can I be old man Curtis here for just a second? Yeah. Is there is there a name tweet essay? What is the name for that? Thread. Tweetstorm? Tweet storm. Yeah, but it's like, but it has numbers. Thread. Tweetstorm. Thread. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The Twitter thread. Yeah, we go.