The Press Box - That’s Mr. O’Rourke to You!: Beto, Today’s NBA, and Tucker Carlson | The Press Box

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

Beto O’Rourke running for the Democratic nomination for president (03:00), the happiness of today’s NBA players (23:30), and Tucker Carlson's audio clips unearthed by Media Matters (38:30). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. March Madness tips off on Thursday and to get your bracket set, make sure you listen and subscribe to our college basketball experts on One Shining podcast with Mark Titus and Tate Fraser. Also on Monday, be sure to watch the guys on their live selection show, recapping the seatings from Selection Sunday and previewing the top matchups to look forward to. You can check out the show on YouTube and listen to One Shining podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

David, Donald Trump went on a Twitter rampage this weekend, targeting everything from Fox News to Megan McCain to a rerun of Saturday Night Live. If you had 50 free tweets this weekend, what would you target? Oh, man. I mean, honestly, most of my tweets would probably be, I'm sort of, you know, singularly obsessed with my newborn child,

So there'd probably be a lot of like, if I was going to be on a Trump-style rampage, I'd probably be tweeting it like pacifier companies about why they can't figure out how to keep them in the baby's mouth. Like how hard could this possibly be just to put like a like a harmonica holder around the baby's head? This really isn't that complicated. If I was going to, I mean, Trump was Trump was tweeting at like the S&L rerun, right? Yes. Yeah. There have been a lot of, there have been many times where if I were an angry Twitter,

user, I would be inclined to be tweeting at, like, at UFC asking, like, why do these guys always have the same damn fight? And before I realize that it's the same fight that I've seen before. So I can, part of me can sympathize with that. Probably similarly with like MSNBC, I'm just like, am I watching a rerun right now? Oh, no, we're just still mad at the same thing. No, but I think the best use of this weekend would have been to just actually do it trumped and just have a Twitter burner account that just asks Fox News at Fox News, when is Judge Janine coming on over and over again and just see if I ever got a response. I think I would just get a kick out of that.

I think mine just testified to how boring my life is. One is, why can't I figure out if my daughter is allergic to almond butter, number one. Number two, NBC's somewhat lackluster production of a NASCAR race. And number three, much like Trump, being angry at Saturday Live that I didn't know was a rerun. So I've never felt closer to Trump. I really haven't that this weekend. We are the for the afternoon crowd of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

The press box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to appear on morning radio. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here again with three topics for your pleasure and amusement. First, David, have you heard that Beto O'Rourke is running for president? We discuss what the early coverage of Beto mania means to you and your family. Second, are NBA players less happy than they used to be? An inquiry into athletes in the age of social media. and finally the slow and agonizing torture of Tucker Carlson,

who's getting a noogie for his old appearances on Bubba the Love Sponge. Is there anything better than that? No, no, there isn't, we discuss. Plus the notebook dump and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, as expected or maybe feared, Beto O'Rourke, aka the guy who lost a U.S. Senate race in vaguely inspiring fashion, is running for the Democratic nomination for President. O'Rourke announced on Thursday and within hours

was standing on a countertop in Iowa like he was on a surfboard simulation machine. My first question for you, sir, is the simplest. Is it okay if we just call him Beto? I actually saw this come up on Twitter because everybody's just calling him Beto. And that's the shorthand, right? And should we call him O'Rourke?

Does that seem weird? Yeah, O'Rourke definitely seems weird. He has a little bit of that professional athlete thing where it's like you know him by the full name almost entirely and then and then the you know the nickname sort of is what sticks yes um you know i mean i always used to joke around that like no one could imagine like calling elton brand elton you know i mean they're like you know there's there's so many like pro athletes from just all over the years where it's just the entire name or the number or the nickname or whatever i don't know bettos i mean i think he's he's obviously to

to take this question too seriously. I think he'd be very happy for everyone just to call him Beto and so that's fine. Of course. That's the brand. The familiarity is the brand, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it does,

there is this weird, you do sort of sound like a teeny popper when you're doing it. Beto. But I'm not sure. Again, if I saw a tweet about O'Rourke, I'm not sure without a picture I'd know who the person was talking about.

No, absolutely not. The last name by itself doesn't do anything. It's either the entire thing or just the first name. And I think that's what, you know, that's what's on his posters, you know, that's what's on the placards. And I think that, you know, he might be our first, he might be our first, like, you know, single-named president. This is like, it's like President Madonna or something, though, you know, is President Beto. You were fascinated by the launch as you were emailing me of this campaign, which came with a Vanity Fair cover profile by Joe Hagan, which was written when he hadn't quite decided, at least officially, whether he was going to run or not.

He was still thinking about it. Annie Leibovitz shot the pictures for Vanity Fair, and she said, I was in a quandary about whether he should wear a blue shirt or something more relaxed. So when we went out there, and this is in the appropriately rural setting where that cover photo was taken, I said, listen, if you're going to run, wear the blue shirt. And if you're not going to run, wear something else. And he said, let's put on the blue shirt, which is sort of Beto's, oops, I did it again, which is sort of Beto Works way of announcement. What did you make of the media rollout of the campaign? It has to be said that Beto O'Rourke, as much as he sort of captured the imagination of the nation during his run against Ted Cruz in Texas, I don't know. I mean, I'm in a very cloistered spot here in a New York media office.

And it seemed like the whole thing landed with more of a sigh than any sort of particular, you know, a lacrity. But, I mean, my take, and this is not, you know, anything, anything particularly incisive, is that, you know, he has a constituency. He has a very, I mean, his constituency is, I think has much less to do with Texas than has to do with a sort of certain set of national Democrat base. I don't remember if I said it on this podcast before one of the most shot, you know, when I moved back to New York in the summer, you know, I was. expected to be shocked by my favorite bars being turned into high-rise apartments or whatever. But the first thing that shocked me was just a better aurorque sign in front of a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. There goes the neighborhood. And that's sort of the, that's the base, right? And having this big Vanity Fair cover story, having a HBO documentary, which is, I guess, just debuted at South by Southwest, I mean, these aren't particularly savvy moves if your goal is to reach a broader base, right?

but if the base that you already have is if you can solidify that base and if you can continue to raise money like it I mean they should announce he made six million dollars kind of off the bat then you know if he keeps making money like that then he can be in the campaign for the long haul and as we saw with the very sizey Republican primary field from the last cycle uh staying in the battle I mean staying in the fight was half the battle yeah I mean this this goes back to what we were talking about a few weeks ago is media Twitter, resistance Twitter, New York media offices, how much do what they think about these guys really matter? And because Beto, as you said, kind of lands like in our world lands a little bit like a thud.

One, because he's not just in a mono-a-mano race against Ted Cruz anymore, where everybody, you know, in our media circle is pro-betto. And also that I think just because the, world moves kind of fast and people just got tired of him. People are like, okay, you know, what else is out there? And then I think the other thing is his sort of, you know, he, he declares for the presidency and doesn't have a bunch of really describable issue positions. In this Vanity Fair piece, he talks a lot about his ability to bring people together. Here's a clip of O'Rourke with CBS's Gail King when she asked him about raising taxes on the rich. I think the wealthiest

at a time of historic income inequality, should be asked to pay a greater share. I don't know what the levels should be at, but I know that the tax cuts from nearly two years ago of $2 trillion at a time that we had $21 trillion in debt at a moment of extraordinary need across this country was one of the most irresponsible things that the country has ever done.

So I wanna raise taxes on the rich. I just don't know how much, but how much is kind of the key here. Yeah. Do I want to return it to pre-Trumpian levels? Do I want to return it to Eisenhower-era levels? That really is the crux of the matter. And by the way, just as a very small media note, Gail King, the other morning sitting on the set of CBS this morning with two very experienced political journalists, Nora O'Donnell and John Dickerson. And there was some definite I would have liked to have done that interview squinting going on from the other panelists. to O'Donnell here at the end of the second. Okay. I'm sitting here asking, did you ask him this? Did you ask him now?

So are you going to put more of it sort of out online? So the stuff he says about... The thing called social. Okay, social. It's going up right now. Okay, good. It's this thing called social. Wow.

The other thing I think that's factoring in this is when he's asked why he wants to run for president. He keeps talking about this kind of mystical stuff. The quote to Vanity Fair, they got so much traction was man, I'm just born to be in it and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment. He and his wife talked about this kind of supernatural feeling they almost felt the first time, one of the first times he addressed a big room full of people in Houston when he was running for Senate in Texas. Jonathan Chape made this point in New York Magazine in which he said essentially that Beto is running for president because he's good at running for things. That's why he's running.

but you can't say that when you run for president. So Chate writes, nobody runs to the presidency by calling themselves a talented politician. It's to meta, to gauche. O'Rourke is trying to find ways to express his rationale without putting it in so many words. And I thought that was a good point because I'm a talented politician is not a sell. But that's why he's running for president. Is it not? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I think there might be some calculation if you, you know, kind of zoom out that, you know, we've discussed before that, you know, in this day and age, you don't really get a situation. second chance. You don't get to sit one out and wait for your turn anymore. You know, when you have a little bit of momentum, a little bit of wind at your back, then this is the, that's your moment to run, right? I mean, if, you know, if Elizabeth Warren doesn't, doesn't end up faring very well, I think that'll be a lot of the postmortem will be that she should have done it four years ago. And, but, but yeah, I mean, I think that to take, I mean, Beto, and there's some other candidates in the race that fit the description too, but, but Beto is certainly kind of pushing that to the extreme, right?

I mean, to be running for president with the kind of resume that he has, it, I mean, it invites those questions. And yeah, he's good at running for things. And yeah, he's, he's an attractive politician. And I just think that it'll be really interesting to see how the coverage moves forward because you do have a sort of, I mean, you have a split, even, you know, like we were saying, even on the more on the liberal side of the spectrum and in liberal media, I mean, where, take MSNBC.

There's a number of hosts there that kind of will see him in like an RFK mold and, you know, or in the Al Gore. You wouldn't be talking about Chris Matthews. Well, I mean, I didn't. I actually haven't watched Chris Matthews, but I get, but I said the moment that he, the first time I saw about a Roarck, I was just like, this is Chris Matthew's dream candidate. I mean, this is, this is the very definition of an old person's idea of a young person, you know, I mean, this is a, this is.

To borrow a line from Michael Kinsley. Yeah, I mean, this is, it's a, he's perfect. But then, you know, I clicked on Morning Joe this morning, and obviously that's a specific ideological, uh, land in MSNBC world, but they were just dogging him, right? I mean, for being unsurious and for, and for not being prepared for some of the obvious questions that were coming his way. And I think that in some ways that's a, you know, I mean, that's, that's a more honest, I mean, a more realistic position.

That said, you know, the GOP seems to be going after him, or at least the conservative side seems to be particularly interested in tearing down his potential before it really even gets going. I just was Googling around to in preparation from this podcast and totally missed that yesterday they tweeted at GOP tweeted out a picture of his mugshot from getting a DUI years ago saying on this St. Patty's Day a special message from noted Irishman Robert Francis O'Rourke, which is just like so insane that that's coming from the GOP Twitter account. for one thing, but just that he's, you know, he's that guy. They're just going to try to, like,

yank the carpet out as quickly as possible. I'm sure for some people, that'll be, you know, that'll add to his bona fides. That, um, it all feels like from conservative media and actual political conservatives, it feels like the Obama playbook being run back again, you know, calling Obama Barry and, you know, making fun of his light resume, all that stuff feels very familiar. I would say that if it does feel like he landed with a little bit of a thud in media Twitter, he is also going to be the candidate in this race who is most likely to speak to media Twitter. He in the Joe Hagan profile in Vanity Fair, he says, O'Rourke compares the battle against Trump to, quote, this is an O'Rourke, quote,

every epic movie that you've ever seen from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings. This is the moment whether we're going to win or lose everything. there was also overworked Twitter joke legend Matthew Zaitland noted this on Twitter Beto O'Rourke was asked by Chuck Todd about what he's reading and he said the Odyssey is my favorite book of all time he mentioned David Wallace Wells' new book the Uninhabitable Earth and the power of myth by Joseph Campbell at which point Zitlan asked is this what being pandered to is like so So that was good.

And I also like this Jack Schaefer had a term for Beto, which he called semi-goggery. Trump is a demigog. And Schaefer said that Beto is a semigog. Think of him as a semigog, a temperate politician who exploits the naivety of the mob with his hollow yet passionate appeals to goodness, light, and possibility. Because he never issues genocidal orders or establishes totalitarian regimes. the semigog can also escape our deep scrutiny. Instead, he lulls his targets into political sleep with his eternal kindness, his overdone decency in his endless speeches.

Anyway, I thought that was good. Yeah, you know, that occurred to me as well. I mean, what we're going to see, none of the candidates will be shying away from interacting with the constituency in Iowa. I mean, the voters in Iowa, but. They may be standing on coffee shop tables less, but yes. Yeah, but Beto's going to expand the playing field, I guess, to use the sports term and the sports metaphor. I mean, he's, as our co-worker Tyler Tynes pointed out, I mean, he doesn't have a job, right?

So, I mean, it's him and if Biden gets in, they'll be the two that'll have, you know, be able to campaign without the kind of formal nod towards doing something else with their time. And you know that, I mean, Beto's, I mean, I'm sure people are saying this. I haven't read it. But, you know, Iowa's is going to be where, you know, he kind of rises or falls. I mean, again, like I said, he could be in it for the long haul regardless. But if he can win Iowa, that's going to be really mean for his campaign, obviously. But there is a sort of like inverted Trump character to it where he's kind of playing or where, you know, he might be able to play the most kind of base game of FaceTime and handshaking and platitudes and asking opinions of voters in lieu of answering for himself and that sort of thing. and it's not all form, no substance, but it is.

The semigog is the right way to look at it. And that might be a winning formula in a way that we haven't really considered it before. I think that's exactly right. And I think it's interesting. Like, we, Trump, you harness the power of social media in a particular way, also to allied a lot of issue positions or give issue positions that he either later rejected or never believed in the first place. And O'Rourke could do a huge.

similar thing by being sort of constantly online by understanding how people interact with Facebook and social and all those kinds of things. I think it's fascinating. The other thing I love from this week was this applies to all the candidates. As soon as you get in the big leagues, you have to face the big league reporters. And we learn so and what happens is we discover something about a candidate that would have been unimaginable a few cycles ago. This is Clinton and Obama smoking pot, George W. getting a DUI, being an alcoholic, et cetera, et cetera. This time it's Betta O'Rourke having been a hacker. He was a member, and I'm quoting from Joseph Min, who is an author of an extremely well-timed new book, Cult of the Dead Cow.

Beto was part of the hugely influential cult of the dead cow in the 80s using an Apple 2E and a 300-baud modem. He connected with another young hacker who ran the bulletin board called Demon Roach Underground, and his writings from nearly three decades ago were under the Handel's psychedelic warlord. So, they found this one, what Reuters called a disturbing piece of fiction where Beto talked,

again, he's imagining a character here, but this is one day I was driving home from work and I noticed two children crossing the street and then the driver in this O'Rourke story puts his foot on the accelerator to try to hit the children. So, this is a moment. Is it not?

It's a little bit like bad tweets or old tweets. Yeah. Except in a kind of kind of like more sepia-toned 80s way. A hacker. Yeah, he was a teenage edge lord. I mean, it's a very, I think in some ways that stuff's going to be really relatable. If he, you know, to the younger voting crew or to the, especially to the most online of the, of the young. the younger voting block, but, you know, that block might already be in Bernie's camp.

So, I mean, it's, it's, it'll be, it'll be sort of, I don't know that these are, I mean, as far as like, you know, skeletons in the closet, this seems like pretty thin gruel to me. Well, what, but what's Trump going to do with that? Because Trump has a hacker problem. Yeah. And can't Trump just say, you know who is an actual hacker is my opponent? even though O'Rourke was looking for free video games not to rig the election,

the American election for president. But I just, I mean, that feels like a hundred percent chance that that is going to get taken out of context. Yeah, I mean, it was interesting to see how quickly Trump came out talking about Beto after, as soon as he announced his candidacy.

He was talking about Beddow's hand gestures, which I'm almost ashamed to admit that I was joking about in real time as I was watching it. Oh, that feels bad, doesn't it when Trump? Yeah, it's never good. I guess the knock that you, I mean, that I mean that I would draw from my own kind of jokey criticism is that there's part of it that seemed very practiced, right? I mean, the hand gestures felt a little bit forced and whatever else. I'm not sure that that's a bad thing for a young politician, right?

But I just don't know if that is too, that that being brought up at all is too is too much for a presidential candidate, right? I mean, being practiced is not a negative. No. I mean, I'm not, I don't think that the hand gestures were, well, I mean, to reference another hand gesture, they weren't like a rope adope. But if they were, then that's a, that's probably not a bad idea to get Trump distracted talking about your hands when he could be talking about your hacking background or something else. It really is like a boxing match. Yeah. Just waving your hands in Trump's face.

All right, David, now it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter may take. it at exactly the same time. David, last Tuesday, you saw the amazing story where TV stars Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin were charged with various crimes in association with a college admission scandal. So for Huffman, we did

all the William H. Macy and Fargo jokes. And for Lori Loughlin, we did the full complement of full house material. Examples. Can't wait until Aunt Becky's sentence and she has to ask the judge to have mercy.

I forgot about that catchphrase. Or when Uncle Joey found out about Aunt Becky's scheme and then you cut to Dave Cooleyer saying, Cut it out. We also have Aunt Becky is still cashing those Wake Up San Francisco checks. And I also enjoyed this one. You're in big trouble, mister.

Thanks to Rylan Grant and Brian Moritz for that one. Also, oh, by the way, I forgot one. For fans of all NCAA football scandals, Aunt Becky come to Ole Miss. That was also a great one. Our pal Jacob Wohl was back in the news, David. Oh, no, not this. According to the all-weekly city pages,

it came to Minneapolis on a quasi-journalistic mission, exit on quasi. And at one point, Woll went to the cops to report a death threat from one, Drake Holmes. Turns out the threatening account may have been an account operated by Wohl, and according to journalist Tony Webster and Will Summer, Woll might have actually been threatening himself. So it was an overworked Twitter joke

to write Jacob Bull is the only person who used the Jussie Smollett story as an inspiration. Thanks to Augie Hayes for that one. And finally, David, what a week for Paul Manafort. Gets nearly four years in prison from a federal judge in Virginia. It gets another three and a half years in Washington, D.C. And then on Wednesday, the Manhattan DA charges Manafort with more than a dozen felonies. So Manafort gets two federal sentences and now maybe a state sentence. It was an overworked Twitter joke to say

What do you call the EGOT for crime? That's great. I love a good EGOT joke. All right, topic number two, are NBA players unhappy? A discussion I wanted to have with Bill on the BS pod this week, and I think we should continue it here,

and I think maybe we should just actually start it here. Because this is actually fascinating to me, and I think this probably contains more multitudes than we can do in one second. For sure. But the question is, are NBA players in 2019 uniquely unhappy versus NBA players of an earlier age? Here's our boss, Bill Simmons, talking to Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, of course, at the Sloan conference. Let's take a listen.

A lot of these young men are genuinely unhappy. I mean, some have come from very difficult circumstances. That doesn't help. Some of them are amazingly isolated. And you and I have talked about this. This goes back to Jordan in the 90s. Right. It's not even the camaraderie.

that they were accustomed to. I mean, you saw some of the trailer or some parts of this film that we have from Michael's last year on the Bulls. I mean, the camaraderie was incredible. I mean, Michael, like, what people didn't see was, I mean, he and Phil Jackson, obviously,

as the coach deserves enormous credit, but there was like classic team building going on all the time. These guys were a band of brothers, you know, on the buses, on the planes, and all the attention only brought them closer. If you're around a team in this day and a, age, their headphones on, they're isolated, and they're head down.

So you go on to say the reality is that most players don't want to play together. There's enormous jealousy amongst our players. I want to know that Silver's coming from a good place here. He goes on to talk about mental health stuff and isolation and things that he obviously cares about. My take, though, is after hearing this and various people say similar things, I haven't seen any evidence that leads me to believe in. players are actually unhappiered now than they were before.

And I'm willing to be convinced that that's true, but the stuff that cited Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, Quillan, it doesn't strike me as the players have changed so much as the technology has changed and or the power dynamics in the league have changed. What do you make of all this? If I agree with you, does that mean the segment's over?

Yeah. We'll just move on to number three. I mean, I think that that's a very, I think that's a really canny point. I mean, I think that I think that that could be true of anything. I mean, you know, how many times in media history as of magazine cover stories asked if our children are unhappy now and they were in decades past? And I think that, you know, you could probably boil some of that down to like, you know, they have access to, to, you know, black clothes and an eyeliner now. Does that make them more unhappy? I mean, or is that just, you know, evidence of an unhappiness that was there all along?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's certainly some truth to that that we're that between the players being able to, you know, bypass media to, you know, their personality is kind of being on display all the time through either their own social media or through myriad media outlets and interviews and whatever else. And also our, you know, intense scrutiny of player movement of, of, you know, you. you know, personality uh, diagnostics as, as, as the more,

the most interesting storyline, much more interesting than the games themselves. I think it is. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

but I do, but I think that feeds into it. I think it's a, I think it's a, it's, well, it's a circular argument, but it's also,

it's a circular phenomenon that, that, that the expression of unhappiness probably feeds at real unhappiness. Um, and I don't know if unhappy is the best way to put it, but I think it's a sort of like, like, you know, clinical, you know, it's a sort of simplified anodyne way to put it.

I think that there's a certain, I think that with the increased freedom, the increased power that the players have overall, that sure, I mean, that's, there's going to be a level of unhappiness that comes with feeling like you should have more control over your, not just your career, but your personal well-being and your personal happiness and feeling like you're falling short of what you could achieve. That's, I mean, that's a real thing. But don't we think that NBA players in the 90s felt like they had a lack of control and a lack of and weren't hitting their ceiling because in a team they were fated to play for it because where they were drafted? I mean, one thing that's here a couple of reasons I would push back on his, on Silver's idea.

Number one is just the basic golden age fallacy that we all make. He cites the bulls here. Are you kidding me? Michael Jordan and camaraderie with his teammates are in the same sentence? this is a team that Steve Kerr and Luke Longley were on, right? This is the guy who played with B.J. Armstrong. One of my favorite books and yours too is the Jordan Rules. And in that book, everyone wants to be traded.

Everyone, the book, it could be like Kyrie Irving and Quill Leonard. Everyone wants out over the course of a season. But they didn't have any way to do it. They didn't have anything to do about it. They couldn't tweet it. They couldn't force their way out. You know, Jerry Krause wasn't going to listen to them. And so nothing came of it.

And I just kind of wonder, I'm like, wait a second, what are we, you know, when he talks about the 90s, this is when Charles Barkley was throwing people through windows. That was when NBA players were happy. Yeah. That's when they were, you know, in sort of the arms of camaraderies. So I just, first of all, I just find this idea that everybody wants to be traded now and everybody's kind of unhappy with their lot in life. I just, I got news for you. Everybody in the world is like this. Every journalist I know is like this.

Yeah. Gosh, I could be so good if only I were working at X place. If only my bosses paid attention to me. If only my bosses gave me better assignments, instead of giving that guy better assignments or gal across the newsroom. That's everybody. Yeah. And we just don't have any power to do anything about it because we're replaceable, unlike Kyrie Irving. So that's one.

It's just this golden age thing. The other thing I brought up with Bill is this sort of idea that, just the way we in the media talk about NBA players now. We talk about them like commodities. We talk about them like they're not real people almost. Yeah, I really, I like this point. And I just think when you talk about them for years and years as the compliment we give in NBA players to call them an asset, that's the compliment. Imagine if I said, David, David, Shoemaker is a real asset at the ringer.

You say, oh, that's very nice brand. No, no. I mean asset in the sense that you make our salaries line up and that if we needed to, trade a bunch of people over to you know ESPN.com you could help us line up the salary so we could get somebody we really wanted over there and then you'd be like oh well that actually isn't a compliment

at all. That's just saying I'm a just piece of meat to you that I'm a monopoly chip to you. So if we're talking about NBA players in this way and general managers are talking to NBA players this way why wouldn't they revolt who wants to be talked about

like that? Yeah, that's true. I mean that's That has to be frustrating. I mean, I think that there's a lot of kind of vague cycle analysis that we could talk about in part one. And I think that most of the points that you made were right. I think that there's, I think that, you know, there is a difference in the modern era, but we can set that aside.

I definitely think that the, you're right, the vocabulary makes a big difference. And the sort of, you know, the pressure to make trades, the ongoing conversation about trades, even if they're not, even if they never come to fruition, I think that to go back, to briefly touch on the first part, your first argument again, I think that you could make the case whether or not you want to, but you could make the case that there were probably more NBA players that were kind of just happy to be there, right? I mean, that were kind of a higher percentage were sort of just happy with their lot in life or content with their lot in life. And I think that that's much less the case now, and to bring it back to the point you just

made, we're talking about, like, the vast majority of the NBA, are now not just unhappy or potentially unhappy with their lot in life, but they're being treated as just, I can't think of a word that won't, like, inflame the conversation even more. They're just trade chips. I mean, literally, you know, and there's, with every team trying to be, trying to put together a super team, I mean, that's sort of, if there's, if there's going to be a big three in every place where it's possible,

then that means there's going to be an insignificant 12, you know, that are helping hold that team's salary. cap together like pieces of scotch tape. Yeah, I just, I just think if we got in the time machine right now and went back to the Bulls locker room or the Maver's locker room, whichever locker room you want in 1994, I don't think we'd find a larger level of I'm cool with my lot in life. I just really don't. I mean, just remember, as much as salaries have changed and the megawattage of famous change, these were still incredibly famous people in 1994. Oh, yeah. These are not, these were not, even, you know, Mark Aguire was a famous person in 1994. I'm not just talking

about Jordan Barclay, those guys. Like, these are famous people who were paid a ton of money. And I just don't, I don't believe that. I don't, I just fundamentally at some point don't believe that they were just like, I'm cool with it, you know, we're going to lose the time. I think the difference is power. They didn't have anything they could do about it. Right. And, you know, it's like journalists are, I keep going back to journalists, which is a terrible analogy, because we have nothing in common almost with NBA players. But in newsrooms back in the day, we might look back at the New York Times in 1994

and so people are content to be there. And now we read the Twitter accounts of New York Times people. We see them lashing out at sources and subjects and complaining about coverage and the old Gawker Empire and all that stuff. And it's like, I think that was going on back then too. I just think people have Twitter accounts. The other thing I would say about this

is that when a GM, like a Danny Aange or Dale Moore, insert whoever you want in here, makes a move that blows up a team, blows up camaraderie, blows up relationships between working people. And we like the move. We say, that's a great move. That guy is really, really smart, and he's really, really analytical in what he's doing. When Kyrie Irving says something or name insert your NBA player tries to force trade, we say, He's throwing a temper tantrum.

He can't control his emotions. He just wants, he just, he just wants more, more, more, more, and he won't be happy with his. Now, wait a second. Why is one cool analytical thinking and the other is can't control the emotions? Why do we think, why do we think, you know, that is, I just don't understand that disparity. And I feel that's like every transaction we talk about has that disparity. Yeah, but doesn't that kind of go to the point of player, I mean, of a source of player unrest, right? I mean, that that's the way that the discussion always takes place.

Yeah, I think so, because you're afraid you're just going to be traded tomorrow and whatever camaraderie Adam Silver is talking about could be broken up in like five seconds. Sure. And whatever way you act out, I mean, I agree with you that there's, that there's vast wells of unhappiness in the NBA of your that we're not considering, that not everyone's always considering in this conversation. I think there were probably a lot more fists, you know, going through walls in the NBA of the 80s and 90s, certainly the 70s. I think there's, you know, and that's the sort of thing that might have been reported in a Jordan Rule-style literary readout sometime later, but not necessarily reported on day-to-day. And, you know, that's the sort of thing that could never happen now, just would very rarely happen now just because of the exposure that it would get. and some of those I think same you know that same emotion uh spills out in different ways and and and yeah I mean players players get dogged for it I mean I don't want to dwell too much on the on the

journalist thing but there I mean there has been I mean it is a media podcast so that yeah I guess I mean one thing that one way that like you know the newsrooms of the 80s and 90s are different than the ones we're in today is that we have resources like Twitter where you know, people use them for many different things, but for looking for potential future employment, it's unparalleled, right? I mean, to be able to have, to have an outlet to post your story and like, you know, the editor at a competing magazine or newspaper can slide into your DMs and be just like, I like what you're doing here. Um, you know, that's, that's an incredible tool. Obviously, that doesn't, I mean, for NBA players, Twitter, which is every bit as significant,

is mostly a, you know, a canyon of criticism. At least that's the part that they're paying attention to. And I actually really liked, in case we don't get there, I want to point out, I really like Jason's point, Jason Gay's point on Bill's podcast that when players talk about the media, they're talking about social media too. And there's this sort of like, there's this very blur, like just a giant, there's this great blur where they think that like everybody

talking trash to them is of the same critical body. of those the people writing columns and articles about them. But yeah, I mean, obviously every new media affects different groups of people in different ways. But I think that, yeah, I mean, I think for players, they're hearing a lot more negativity. And they're hearing it from kind of unmoored faceless sources, which is, you know, it's a lot different when your local columnist who, like, flies on the team plane and occasionally has beers with you in the hotel, write something critical of you. because that's just, you know, some bullshit that you can talk out at the end of the night, you know? When it's just these like disembodied naysayers,

we saw how Russell Westbrook reacted to the heckler in Utah the other day, and that guy had a body, you know? And that guy was right there doing it. It's tough. I love the point, Ryan Russell makes this point a lot when he's doing this weekly podcast with Bill, where he says, we shouldn't romanticize every single time an NBA player speaks out. Not every time somebody speaks out and complains

is, you know, this show of power that we as a media should romanticize. I totally agree with that. I would just say the corollary to that is we shouldn't romanticize every time a GM makes a trade that tears a team apart as a brilliant move. Just automatically. Well, that's a great, you know, who cares about the feelings of the people? It was a great tactical move. We shouldn't romanticize that either. You know, it's like, this goes both ways.

And that goes about what I'm saying about the way we talk about players, you know, and to talk about GM. So, all right, David. Topic number three. Tucker Carlson doesn't need any help falling backward off the high dive. But last week, the watchdogs over at Media Matters unearthed audio clips that Carlson made between 2006 and 2011 on the Bubba the Love Spun show. Now, you and I listened to Howard Stern back in the day. But I feel Bubba is part of this tier of edgy, and I'm making giant air quotes here, morning radio, along with Opie and Anthony and Mancow that I never actually heard. All I heard about was the controversy that was.

was generated by the show. Yes. It was just like it was like an AP story in the newspaper. I was like, wait, what is opium, Anthony? I don't know what that is. Yes. Carlson made comments about African Americans, immigrants, and in this particular clip, the Iraqi people.

Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semi-literate primitive monkeys. But I just have zero sympathy for them or their culture, a culture where people who don't use toilet paper or forks. And the way they treat women, you know, I agree with you. Their culture is, but you're in their homeland and you're over there as an American who they hate and they want nothing more than the Americans off of their soil. So they're not going to play games. I mean, they can just shut the fuck up and obey, is my view.

Is that, I'm sorry, is that, is that Bubba actually trying to bring around to women's rights? And Tucker is just going back to the slurs. Is that the dynamic in that clip? I gave that. I'm not even sure that was Bubba, but I'll take you it your word. One of Bubba's pals. So I think we could do this quick. quickly because this to me is an example of where a semi-respectable, and I am making air quotes

once again around the word semi, a semi-respectable person goes on a morning radio show and tries to hang with the host. And they get in trouble because they soon learn that whatever the host is doing is not okay outside the confines of the morning radio show. Do you agree? Yes. Okay. End of segment. No, the most notorious example I found of this, I'm sure there so many. I mean, everything Donald Trump said on the Stern show would probably qualify. Yeah. This one, 1995, U.S. Senator, U.S. Senator Alphonse D'Amato goes on Don Imas' show and made fun of Judge Edo. Now, is that the most 90s thing you ever heard?

Yeah, that's great. As the New York Times put it, Mr. D'Amato sharply criticized and belittled Judge Lance Edo and used an exaggerated Asian accent like that of villainous Japanese characters in old World War II movies. So that happened back in 1995. I was also wildly entertained David by the fact that Bubba the Love Spunge under his real name, Bubba Clem, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Oh, yeah. So you can read Holman Jenkins and you could read Bubba the Love Spunge on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. It begins.

I host a comedy-driven radio show for guys, which is, it's just great. Later he's talking about, do I really, this is another paragraph, do I really need to go into the rich history of insult comedy? Lisa Lampinelli, the rich history, Lisa Lampinelli, Andrew Dice Clay, Roddy Dangerfield, even triumph the insult comic dog. Comedy breaks taboo subjects that release the unspoken into the air in ways that are, dare I say, funny.

Now, again, I don't have a lot of experience with the Bubba the Love Fun show program. Show program, show program. But do we think Bubba is someone who uses the phrase, dare I say a lot? Yeah, dare I say no. No, the answer is that. That'd be pretty flowery for you.

Yeah, that would be a lot. Yeah, I mean, I just think that we can easily imagine how all of those listed comics would react if someone threw these exact same moments in their face, you know, years later from, you know, earlier stand-up sets or radio appearances. And I think what, you know, makes Tucker a different sort of, well, target. I mean, it's clearly it was a, you know, there was a drive behind this media matter investigation. I mean is that is that he we knew that he wasn't going to he wasn't going to kind of just own up to it with the smirk on his face you know I mean he's he he's doing a totally

a different line of work now I guess which changes the calculus a little bit but it's just also you know that sort of disingenuousness is built into his DNA so we knew even you know that it was it was in some ways there was a little just desserts in that in that you know this kind of lengthy takedown was was you know was confronting him with the same sort of like humorless tsunami of skewering or skewed skewering if I could say it that way that he inflicts inflicts upon other people and his own targets but you know it's just it all seems a little bit just silly on both sides uh disingenuous built into his

DNA should be on the uh fox news commercials for Tucker Carlson show he might take it as a compliment He might. I know. He might. All right, let's do the notebook dump. First off, David, can we talk about the practice of retweeting compliments? I saw a noted long form person who had a big piece last week. And within a few hours of the pieces posting, he had retweeted 10 compliments for the piece. Please read this wonderful nuanced piece. Please read this. This is an excellent piece by so-and-so. It's sort of like the magazine piece becomes a movie poster where you have all the blurbs on it. Yeah. Do you have a policy on? on this? I think this is pretty despicable. Yeah, no. I mean, honestly, I don't, I'm not a prime Twitter user. Everyone knows this. And even in my Twitter

heyday, I don't, I mean, I think that the... This was about three years ago, audience. I can imagine a situation. I mean, I'm sure there were situations where I was particularly proud of a piece or of a take or of a podcast or whatever, and then, you know, would respond to a compliment in such a way that the compliment

would make it out there onto my feed. I'm not sure that that's any more morally acceptable. you know, to sort of like backdoor that said compliment. You know, I guess if people, I mean, if, I think more often than not, any, any compliment that I was particularly interested in other people seeing came from a place where that person had so many more Twitter followers than me that they were doing, you know, there was no reason for me to do the retweeting. But I guess if you're just trying to get the word out that, you know, a lot of people do use Twitter,

I mean, in such a way that they'll, you know, recirculate their own pieces 10 times a day, the day they go up and, you know, the following day and this is, I guess, just another way to do it. It seems sort of, yeah, yeah. I can't, I guess I'm not too worked up about it, but it does seem sort of bad. We should talk about Epicurious Gate. You saw this morning edition.

Oh, yeah. Steve Mullis directed everyone's attention to a job listing for a full-time freelance position. You got to say, I did not know that term. Uh, at Epicurious, where the editor was, giving a quote, rough outline of the job's duties. And it just kept going, right? All the things you have to do.

SEO maintenance, recipe production, newsletter production, writing, various administrative tasks. It got flagged by Twitter users for the New York State Department of Labor. Later came around that the job actually did include benefits. But between this and that New York Times guy, remember who had all the tweets about what colleges produced good journalists? week. Yeah. We need to name for people who are tweeting about tweeting as like they're the solution to a journalism problem, but they're actually the problem. Yeah.

I don't know what it is. But it's just amazing. The turn of like, hey, look, I'm coming out here in a good faith effort to help out journalism. Everybody's like, no, you're not. Yeah. You're the bad person. Yeah, I mean, even when people do come out to help out people and they're even when they're on their, you know, when there aren't such like just bald, faced problems with the with the job in question there's there's always going to be people

knocking them down you know i mean there's there's that's people are always kind of you know what abouting everything that every every good deed that people try to do but you're right it's it's much more significant when they're when they're part of the problem themselves i don't know maybe maybe our listeners can come can come help us come up with a with a term for this because that was a that was a very singular twitter experience that like that will certainly happen again and again At the press box pot, if you have any ideas. By the way, was I happy to see the University of Texas on the New York Times list?

Yes, I was. I was very happy. Two Fox News stories. Judge Janine was benched over the weekend. After her comments about Representative Ihaud Omar, Fox News spokesperson tells Brian Steinberg a variety. We are not commenting on internal scheduling matters. That was pretty clear what happened. The other news was that Donna Brazil is going to Fox.

uh yeah i know brian stelter over at cnn points out that sean handy love to accuse cnn n n n i didn't donna brazil did so the network severed ties with her because cnn has standards and now hannity and brazil are colleagues what a world there's no better spot for a disgraced liberal to go than uh than the fox fox news yeah the fox the fox news liberal gang is just an it's what the Doug Shone kind of gang is just an amazing group of people. It really is. Alan Colms has never looked better by comparison than he did with the other against the other lefties. A couple of 2020 items. Stacey Abrams, who's now toying with Running for President, had a tweet. In hashtag lead from the outside, I explore how to be intentional about plans, but flexible enough to adapt.

20 years ago, I never thought I'd be ready to run for POTUS before 2028, but life comes at you fast, as I shared in a Q&A at South by Southwest. Now, 2020 is definitely on the table. I just want to flag this tweet. This is my, I'm thinking about running for president tweet in which he cites both her book and South by Southwest. So just a double plug from Stacey Abrams. Not, I'm just thinking about Ray for President, but if you'd like to pick up by new book, you can see about my decision-making process also. I talked about this as South by. love it. I miss this last week. Former DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isguer, who we talked about on the show, got hired by CNN, is no longer taking a job as political editor in the Washington Bureau. This is via the, uh, via Politico's newsletter, I think. She's going to be a political analyst at the network. So one, whatever controversy is probably over. Two, I do wonder, as an editor, you were kind of excited. You were kind of.

expected to do your own thing. As an on-air contributor, aren't you then, don't the incentives change to you just parroting the party lines? You know what I mean? It's sort of like, I feel that like we were all, you know, we were all trying to be convinced of, look, she's not just going to be, you know, a pro-Trump, unnuanced voice within CNN. She's actually has all these ideas. But now as a talking head, I feel that's actually what they kind, CNN probably wants her to be. Yeah, I think that's right. I'm not sure this is like a, this is, when the story first broke, I think half of me expected to find out 30 minutes later that she'd in fact been higher as a talking head and there'd been some miscommunication in the press release. So in some

ways, this is getting back to kind of where I thought we would be, but I'm not sure that this is a, this is going to shake out to be a net positive for her to just be taking this sort of ancillary job. And I'm sure, you know, and the fact that it kind of, I mean, I know this was last week, but that it took kind of a little bit longer than one would desire for us to get to this point. I'm not, I mean, it seemed like the outrage had sort of subsided, but maybe that's just a skewed perception on my part. All right, David, you're ready to play David Schuemaker guesses the celebrity profile headline. Oh, God. Okay. We do this at the end of the show.

Last week, David was guessing the headline of a piece about critics replacing Jonathan Gold at the L.A. Times. Thomas Halloran writes in and says that he thought the headline was going to be good as gold question mark which we should have had and by the way a better headline than they actually had which is guess who's coming to dinner

this week David I bring you back to the July 1995 issue of Esquire with Richard gear on the cover the headline is Cindy Who because he'd just been dumped by Cindy Crawford we were looking through it in the ringer office let me tell you. Some stuff in 1995 Esquare would not be running in national magazines today.

Not woke, 1995 Esquire. But I want to direct you to the friend of the book where they had a headline for a review of Apollo 13. Yes, the Ron Howard movie. Apollo 13. So this is the 1995 Esquire Review of Apollo 13. If you want to just say some keywords, I'll give you a few hints and let you try to guess the celebrity headline. If you don't remember Apollo 13, it is about a near disastrous NASA mission. I mean, I got to assume that moon is going to be in here somewhere.

Notting. I mean, it's over the moon. But this is before it came out, or is it a review? It's a review. It's a review. But here's the thing. Think of things with moon in the title. So pop culture things with moon in the title.

Moon. About a disastrous NASA mission. Moon River, Moon, Moon, Reach for the Moon. God, existing titles. Blue Moon. Maybe an album title. Dark side of the moon? There we go.

Wait, that's the answer? The dark side of the moon. Oh, God. Not bad. Yeah, okay. You can see a couple of, a couple of Squire editors cracking each other up with that one. Yeah. Yeah, you sure can.

I'm sad that I didn't. I was already like channeled, just like rushing through like gear idioms before we got to the Apollo 13 part. So maybe we'll get to use those in a future installment of this wonderful feature. If you have better headlines for the Esquire review of Apollo 13, send him to at the press box pod. We'd love to hear them. He is David Shoemaker. The producer of this show is Jim Cunningham. Chris Almata helps us with research.

David, back next week with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, man. David, this is the moment whether we're going to win or lose everything. Yes. Let's put on the blue shirt. Oh, yeah. If we got in the time machine right now There's no better spot for a disgrace liberal to go

What a world Yeah that occurred to me I got news for you Yeah Have mercy Question mark If I agree with you Does that mean the segment's over?

I think this is pretty despicable That feels bad doesn't it When Trump Steals your jokes Yeah he was a teenage edge lord There goes the neighborhood Thank you.