The Press Box - The Antonio Brown Saga, Eric Trump’s Reporting Tips, and Lana Del Rey vs. Her Critic | The Press Box

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

The saga of wide receiver Antonio Brown (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (22:00), a preview of Biden vs. Warren at Thursday's Democratic debate (25:00), Lana Del Rey's response to a critic (24:30), Eric Trump's tips to young investigative reporters (40:15), and more. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is a little girl worth? This is the question that shook the USA gymnastics community when it was revealed that behind sports medicine doctor Larry Nassar's squeaky clean image laid a monster who've been molesting hundreds of young girls. Rachel Den Hollander was the first to publicly call out this abuse. What is a girl worth is Rachel's story, how she helped break down Larry Nassar and exposed USA gymnastics. This gripping memoir is available today at R.D.H. Story and wherever books are sold. David, last week, wide receiver Antonio Brown asked for his release from the Oakland Raiders on Instagram. What I want to know is, if you were a difficult employee, and I assure everyone out there that you're not, but if you were, what social media platform would you use to ask for your release? Um, dang.

Well, I don't really use social media. So this is a tough one for me. I'm only kind of going off a general impression about what a lot of these sites are. I don't know what TikTok does different than anybody else. I would probably go the Snapchat route because I probably wouldn't have the confidence to really follow through with that kind of active rebellion. I'd be really upset, but then be really happy that that request was deleted from the ether in the not too distant future.

Yeah, I mean, it does seem like, I mean, Twitter's probably, the most easily to, easy to embed and to text around, spread around. So that might be the most direct, although I guess the Instagram thing. I mean, we're going into the assumption that the internet technology known as email is not going to be sufficient in this case, I guess. Yeah, or like a fax. I remember some like Tina Brown, New Yorker people, you know, quitting via fax. Yeah. That was seen as a big, big thing.

You really get it. You have to get it in writing, but also do it with urgency. Maybe there's a hole in the market here. Maybe someone should invent a platform and app that's solely for just like tindering your resignation or demanding that you be released from your job. Is that, do we need that? Yeah. I'm just imagining myself, you know, posting it on LinkedIn. Yeah.

And then having like 20, you know, specialists write me and say, do you need some help with your web analytics? We'd love to partner with you and the ringer. I'd get an overwhelming response, but it wouldn't, it would be like, Sorry about, sorry Brian that you're asking for your release. It'd just be like, we would love to partner with you. We are the Cork Board of Media Podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers.

Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots and lots to get to today. We'll preview Thursday's Biden versus Warren confrontation at the Democratic debates. Lana Del Rey takes on a critic. Eric Trump gives tips to young investigative reporters. and think progress sadly is no more. But David, I want to start off by talking to you about the saga of wide receiver Antonio Brown. Yeah.

Which, yeah, which knocked the NFL's actual games down the content power rankings this weekend. If you're not following this, Brown, who is a truly great wide receiver, who got himself traded out of Pittsburgh last year, was mad at the NFL because they would no longer let him wear his preferred type of helmet. because of that, Brown was in and out of training camp with his new team, the Oakland Raiders. Last week, the Raiders find him and Brown allegedly called GM Mike Mayock a cracker. John Gruden, Raiders head coach announced that despite all that, Brown was going to play in Monday night's game. But wait, that's the boring part because on Friday, Brown released an incredibly arty video that featured a taped phone conversation between him and John Gruden trying to get on the same. page. Let's listen to a little bit of that.

I've been trying to be a ready since day one. I've been in front of working my head, so I don't know why it's a question that me being ready. Like, do you guys want me to be a ready? Please stop this shit. Just play football. How hard is. You're a great football player. Just play football.

Yeah, but I'm more than a football player. Man, I'm a real person. It ain't about the football. I know how to do that. Was it just me, David? Or did the music and the water imagery reminds you of the thin red line at all. That's exactly where mine, my mind win, Brian.

Yeah, absolutely. I really did. Terrence Malick is probably happy right now. I just thought of, you know, Antonio Brown staring at the sky and pondering the existential questions of the universe and while John Gruden was on the phone. That was just a wild piece of content

before we even get to what all this means. amazingly well produced, as a lot of people noticed. Alejandro Narisco was the producer of it. Yeah. And seeming to send a message, though I'm not quite sure what the message was. I don't, I mean, I'm not exactly sure what it was either. I mean, one can read back into it to do sort of pushing boundaries and seeing what he could, seeing what it took to, you know, sort of get himself released and, and, but still kind of

improve his cue rating at the same time. I don't really know. I mean, I can only speak from, you know, personal experience on this in saying that, like, when that thing appeared, it was met with, I guess, bemusement is probably the most positive way to spin it around, you know, the ringer HQ. But I feel like it was, it was, you know, dropped into Slack almost as a formality. It was like, well, here's this thing that we're obligated to follow and here's the next chapter in it. but I'm not sure that that movie, whatever, commercial, as weird as it was, really moved the needle a lot. It's just another kind of chapter in this kind of very, very bizarre narrative. So the movie was Friday.

On Saturday after the Raiders had voided the $30 million they'd guaranteed to Brown, Brown went back to Instagram and wrote, I have worked my whole life to prove that the system is blind to see talent like mine. now that everyone sees it, they want me to conform to that same system that has failed me all those years. I'm not mad at anyone. I'm just asking for the freedom to prove them all wrong. Release me at Raiders. Then Brown signed with the Patriots.

Emergency podcasts ensued. And at last check, he's still posting on Instagram, including a 90s-style cartoon of him sitting on a pile of money, which I really enjoyed. Also one of Bill Belichick driving a cab. here's my big question here what are we looking at are we looking at player empowerment or are we looking

or is that sort of doing putting too you know big a gloss on this and are we looking at something else oh man well I mean I think that this is this example

I mean this applies to every moment of player empowerment but I think it's particular here is, you know, is that, you know, the player empowerment blanket is a large and on-compassing one in the year 2019. And I don't think anyone would say Antonio Brown is a figurehead of the movement or even anything that anything that he did really speaks to anything broader, except you can't, you know, you of course view it through that lens. I think Antonio Browns have, you know, like all those kind of cryptic tweets along the way said, he's his own guy. And I think that, you know, this is, there's a lot of empowerment involved.

I mean, it has to be said to go back, I mean, just to go back to the story as you told it, the Raiders did void the $30 million of guarantees, but if he had, I mean, but they didn't. I mean, that was a, that is a severe move clearly on their part. I don't know how many options they had. I think that they were in the position of either guaranteeing it all or avoiding it all, but they were going to pay him on a kind of game-by-game basis, which is, you know, no one should have to do that, especially no one of Antonio Brown's pedigree,

but it wasn't like they took away his money full stop, right? I mean, they were still, and I mean, they would argue that that money was still there for the taking, you know, if he played the games. And then, you know, this is, I understand why he asked for his release. There is certainly, I mean, I don't know if this is the first time that a player has asked for his release via adding somebody on Instagram, a team on Instagram. But it did seem sort of momentous on that front. I actually saw this thing get posted and then, again, on Work Slack and then didn't realize what the implications were for about 30 minutes because I didn't click through. And the demand for release is at the very end, you know.

I know there's a lot of people saying that he'd been kind of angling to get to the Patriots or the Patriots or a team he wanted to go to forever and whether or not this was a long con to get there. You know, it was an interesting story that I think people are just sort of teasing out. This does this definitely feels like one of those times where a lot of reporters had it on background that he wanted to get, he was trying to get to the Patriots, but they can't really report it. There's a lot of people who are very confident. There's a lot of people, a lot of Twitter reporters who have some very confident insinuations going on right now. Yeah, that's a tough one, right, to prove. Because I feel like whenever something like this happens, we say the word collusion or some whatever, whatever form of tampering, I guess it would be in this case. That he was a raider and that the Patriots were part of the secret plan.

But that, does that ever get proven? Does anybody ever figure that out for sure? oh, they were definitely tampering with him or somehow, you know, or somehow doing that, I don't know about that. To the empowerment point, which I don't think so either. I don't think so either. I think it's even the issue of, I mean, of

you know, definitional collusion is probably secondary in a lot of people's minds to whether or not Antonio Brown was just literally trying to get himself cut so that he could go to the Patriots, which I don't think there's anything wrong with that in the rulebook or by the rule book, but that I think that matters more to fan.

To the empowerment point. I totally agree with everything you just said. I would, I guess, add this because I think sometimes when we think about movements, we're looking for people, you know, kind of an idealized person who is at the front of the movement. Like who is the, you know, name, name Muhammad Ali, somebody from the past in sports where we look at them and say, this person started something, this person changed things. I think when we think of player empowerment, there are people who are, you know, sort of changing the way the power structures, are in the league. And then there are people who are using that power to do whatever they want,

right? So if you say Antonio Brown is being a jerk, he is empowered to be a jerk, right? The new, the new system we have in the NFL is you can do all this stuff and just get out of your contract and say, I don't want to play for the Raiders anymore. No thanks. I don't, I just don't want to do this anymore. And I'm going to go play somewhere else. So it's sort of like, I think, I think to understand all these things. It's actually more complex, right? It's about there's all these trickle-down effects. And if we can trace a lot of this to what happens, what has happened in the NBA over the last couple of years, where the players have taken over not only some of the power within the league to move, to be traded, to get out of contracts, that kind of stuff, but the power to dictate

to the media of how they're going to be covered and when they're going to be covered. I mean, to me, Antonio Brown is doing a version of that. Again, it doesn't mean it's like, moral, it has this kind of moral clarity that there is some bigger principle involved other than just what he wants to do and what he feels like doing on this particular week. Right. But to me, it's of a piece of that. You know, it's not unrelated to that. It's somewhere in that.

And the fact that he is playing for the Patriots today rather than the Raiders tells me that like, the movement has happened. Yeah. He is a beneficiary of. Sure. Sure. I mean, I, you know

it's hard to imagine this happening 10 years ago for any number of reasons but yeah I mean I think that just it's certainly part of this movement as you know defined in a broad way but

you know his ability to to you know have his own platform his ability to you know to make any point at all publicly. I mean, he said he was trying to make the point that he was, people like him were underappreciated.

Who knows if that point was made, but he had the voice to say it in a way that, you know, millions and millions of people were paying attention to. Someone just sent me an excerpt from this morning's edition of ESPN's Get Up, in which Mike Greenberg said, in reference, Antonio Brown, what we've just witnessed is the most unprofessional act

that I can ever remember seeing in professional sports. Seems a little bit over the top, and I guess that's the sort of rubric of the show. But, I mean, I guess any time we're talking about player empowerment, you have words like professionalism that are bandied about as the sort of antithesis or the antithetical. I'm not sure that any of those things are going to work together neatly when we look back in a couple years

at all the stuff that's gone on. Part of empowerment, as I was saying, right, is it empowers you to do what you want. And what you want may not be, quote, unquote, professional. That's the thing. Yeah, but I think it also redefines what professional is, right? I mean, this is the profession of football. And the professional football, I mean, as far as we know,

no rules were broken and, you know, no, I mean, as unique as this situation was, it does come, it does spring forth for me, recent history of events that, I mean, nothing, I don't think a lot of new ground was broken here. This wasn't professional in the, nothing he was professional in the, you know, traditional sense, but this is, you know, this is the business now. And the Raiders were well within the rights to, to, you know, tear up his contract, basically. And they were also well within the rights to keep them or cut them. And they decided, after everything they'd been through, that a player with that

sort of platform was not something they wanted to be dealing with weekend and week out. I mean, that was their decision. So, you know, I'm not sure that that was entirely professional either, but by some archaic standard, but, you know, that's what happened. It's a bit, it was a crazy story. And just from a purely media perspective, we talk about this all the time, but there's nothing like a story like this that breaks on the weekend, a story that not only gets everybody's hackles up because of the content of the story, but also gets all the journalist hackles up because they're forced to work on a Saturday

they weren't planning to. And I don't mean that as a night. We all felt that. I mean, I was literally in a car driving to Pennsylvania with a laptop and personal hotspot open trying to like, you know, colorize black and white photos of Antonio Brown's face. By the way, as an art director, I have to say it.

He is, there was way, Antonio Brown's, the amount of news he, made this off season compared to the number of photos of him that existed in a Raiders uniform was that balance was so off and I feel really one of the most unfair things as an art director that could possibly happen. So there's hackles up over in the art department too. But yeah, I mean, we all had to work when we didn't expect to. And this is Antonio Brown. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I was not on the Antonio Brown bandwagon at any point in this off season. But now I'm just sort of like this story has just sort of become worth everything that we've gone through.

It's just such an amazing story. I don't even know what it means. That's the thing is when when journalists start to get mad at these guys, they have to remember that they are being rewarded with content. Yeah. Antonio Brown is going to be a get up story where their greenie is mad at him or not day after day after day throughout the season. If he comes if he goes out next week for the Patriots, he didn't play this week. But if he goes and plays with the Patriots next week, and tears it up. That is going to be a huge story. If he posts crazy stuff on Instagram about Bill Belichick,

that's going to be a crazy story. So that's really amazing. Another good for a media podcast action in the NFL, David. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was great. 17 of 20, 324 yards and five touchdowns. Jackson had been the subject of a billion, but can he play quarterback pieces? And in the reaction to his big day,

you saw, what did you call it in the email, the old takes exposedization of the sports media? Yeah. Well, it was just weird that like the I heard more, listen, when that game was going on, there was nobody who was watching Sunday ticket or, you know, tweeting with their, texting with their friends about football.

I mean, the number one topic of conversation across the board was Lamar Jackson just erupting, right? I mean, there's a brilliant piece on the ringer.com by Tyler Tynes that was just beautifully timed to come out on Saturday before the big game and before he just went off. But there's so many people. I mean, this is all people we're paying attention to,

but weirdly the post-mortem seems to be that the only thing people want to talk about is him proving everybody wrong. And all the people that thought he should be a wide receiver or a running back, it's weird because everybody seems to want to really reference all of these freezing cold takes or whatever, but no one's really referencing it.

There's not a lot of, not a lot of linking going on in all these in calling out the, I mean, listen, there were, there were, he talked about it. He called himself a running back. He knows that there were people that, that told him either directly or indirectly, that he should maybe be a running back or a wide receiver in the pros. He was definitely asked to work out as a wide receiver at the combine and declined, I believe. And there was the, and the Bill Pollian on the ESPN was the big one. Yeah, Bill Pollyne was the big one.

I'm not sure how much dog we should put in Bill Pollyon, but a lot of people do so okay. I mean, those people were definitely out there, but I just mean as a journalistic exercise, shouldn't some of these articles have to name the people that they're addressing and not just refer vaguely to doubters and haters? I mean, that doesn't, it seems like it's a little bit lacking in the coverage. As we often say on this podcast,

if you are taking on the media, you're undefeated. Because you always beat the media with no link. Right. That is it. I mean, I'm looking at some of the headlines here. Lamar Jackson destroys his critics. Lamar Jackson answers his critics and on and on. Who are the critics?

Is it just one guy? And also, by the way, the polio thing reminds me of the greeny thing. Because somebody has to have that opinion. And then that person becomes this useful, just piñata for everybody else. Like, as you said, you can look at Antonio Brown and be like,

man, I have complex feelings about this. I don't know if I like this. Or I recognize his right to do this, but I don't love, you know, this moment or this moment. But everybody then can go up to Greenie. I was like, oh, look at Greenie. He's overreacting. That just simplifies things so much.

Or you can look at Bill Pullian. I mean, you can be a football writer and have doubts about whether Lamar Jackson is going to be a great quarterback or not. That's okay. You know, I understand some of this is racially freighted and all that stuff. And I, I am, if that's happening, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, let's go, let's go wreck shop on whoever's having that take. But it's okay.

to think that. But then you see Bill Polly, oh, look at that. Let's go get that guy. It really clears things up, doesn't it? It does. It definitely does do that. But I don't want to get lost in this. Lamar Jackson had just an all-time great day. Amazing. Fantasy owners everywhere are just like dancing in the streets right now and, and, you know, mortgaging their houses and everything else. And the, and the, and, you know, he was, I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, so I have a I have a place in my heart for Lamar even before this happened. But man, he looks good. You were with him the whole time, not like that old Bill Polly.

No. Finally, David, RIP, at least temporarily to the media's obsession with the Cleveland Browns. If you're not a football person, the Browns are a uniquely terrible franchise. They got a quarterback, though, in Baker Mayfield. They showed a spark last year. The media has gone all in, and I mean all in. Mayfield was in GQ. CBS is opening game with Jim Nance and Tony Romo.

was Titans at Browns, which on paper anyway sounds like an incredibly unsexy matchup. On Sunday, the Browns lost 43 to 13. So, you know, if you cashed your television bets

with the Browns, you may want to, to recalibrate. Gonna be a weird year. All right, David, time for the over Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag

that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box. pod where they are always gratefully received. The first nominee comes from our friend Cal O'Boyle. Did you see Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner both light themselves on fire last week? Johansson defended Woody Allen and said she believed him in regard to his charges of sexual assault.

Renner shut down his ridiculous app after it was overrun by trolls and pranksters. It was an Overward Twitter joke to write The scene in end game where Renner and Johansson wrestled to be the one that throws themselves off a cliff seems to be happening in real life this week.

Anyway, thanks to Cal for that one. We're not done, David, with Boris Johnson whose government suffered yet another resignation. This time it's Cabinet Secretary Amber Rudd. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write Brexit was always a disaster and now it's rudderless.

That's from Tony Groves. who has been on, by the way, been on four podcasts in a row. He's doing an end zone dance on Twitter and you know what? He deserves it. Wow. Tip of the cab to you, sir. Thank you for great work. We also got some great Boris pun headlines sent to us from the UK son.

Floppy Johnson can't get an election. Yeah. Fantastic work. That had a moment on Twitter. Also, even the Washington Post, which will never be confused with Private Eye, had the headline, the Great British Breakoff. All right. As almost a David

guesses the strain pun headline. Finally, David, we cannot get away from this segment without some Antonio Brown tweets. Here they are. Number one,

I guess Antonio Brown got cold feet. See if you could say cryotherapy. Just look it up. Another one that made the rounds this week. Don't look at the pictures though.

Oh, yeah. God. Another one that made the rounds. I'd like to nominate Steelers coach, Mike Tomlin for the Nobel Peace Prize. I guess because he had a relatively peaceful time with Brown over there.

And finally from ESPN's Tim Kuhn, no surprise that Brown's decline really accelerated when he pivoted to video. Thanks to Nathan Heichel, Jack Goldman, affordable ZJ, Isaac Chips, Joel, Swed, Love, and Ray. If you compared a team hopping wide receiver to our continuing journalistic nightmare,

congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And I think we should do a quick Democratic debate preview, which will also serve as a self-plug. You can hear us Thursday night with an instant reaction pod right after the debate concludes. It is going to be taking place in the great state of Texas at Texas Southern University in Houston. It's three hours long, 8 to 11 Eastern on ABC and Univision.

The Control Plus V take, my friend, is to look forward to Elizabeth Warren, Warren, excuse me, tearing into Joe Biden and whether Biden has what it takes to stand up to that. I'm interested in that, but now that Warren has so much momentum, I'm also really interested in what it's going to look like when Warren is challenged. Because I'm not sure we've seen that yet.

And I think it's going to be really interesting. And tell me if you agree to see her challenge, not just on policy, but on electability. Because I think if you gave the true serum to a bunch of Democrats right now, they say, I love Elizabeth Warren. Warren. I'm worried she can't win. Maybe she can't win because of bullshit misogyny, maybe because Trump and the Native American, whatever it is. That's what they're worried about.

And I'd love to see her challenged on that and see what she would say. It's a little bit ephemeral, but I think you're exactly right. I mean, I think that for all of, you know, I mean, this is going to be, you know, Bernie and Biden and Warren are sort of the three front runners right here. But Warren's, you know, Warren's polling trajectory, I mean, I'm no Nate Silver over here, but Warren's trajectory seems to be the only one that matters at all. I mean, the only one that has any significance. Bernie and Biden have sort of been holding serve in their very, in slightly different ways. And, you know, there are definitely the Kamala Harris and, you know, the contingent just below that where people have, you know, percentage wise maybe jumped up a good bit. But I don't know that there's any, I don't know any of that movement really amounts to more than statistical noise at the same. point. Warren is, she's not the frontrunner, but you're right. She's the, she is the sort of,

she's the active figure in this. You know, I mean, she's rising in the pole. She's gaining. She's, you know, on a path, you know, for better or for worse. And I think that, that you're right. I mean, she does have a lot of, she does have a lot to overcome.

And I, and I think that, you know, there are a lot of different factors and you and you mention them a lot. I'm not exactly sure what is going to win people over or what's going to settle that question for people. But, you know, I think going toe to toe to toe with Joe Biden, going toe to toe to toe with Bernie Sanders, you know, going toe to toe to toe with everybody else on the stage who's going to be taking swings at her, because like I just said, it feels like Bernie and Biden's numbers are, you know, pretty established. certainly they're going to go down if one of them is to lose the nomination if either of them is to not win but I think that

that you know I think that Elizabeth Warren is a sort of more a juicier target for a lot of people lower down on the in the polling so yeah I mean I think there's I think she's going to get the opportunity to fight you know she's going to get the opportunity to whatever she wants to do up there I think I think that she'll be given the time and the space to do it and I think that you know Biden certainly has a specific performance. His campaign has a performance in mind that they would like to see.

But one wonders if one, yeah, one wonder is if it's not, if less is more is not part of that game plan, you know, I mean, because I'm not sure that, that from what we've seen of late,

I'm not, I don't, I don't know that, that, you know, lengthy exposition is really the move that they want to be hedging towards right now. So I, I mean,

not, Neither lengthy nor exposition. Yeah, I did. So all of that is to say, and, you know, I think the Sanders-Waron dynamic is going to be really interesting. At least in the, you know, in our post-game show, for sure, we're going to discuss that. But all that's to say is that I think Warren's going to be, you know, going to have a lot. Warren will be in the spotlight on Thursday night. So it'll be interesting to see if she gets the, if she takes advantage of that opportunity.

There is still this reservoir dog's quality of this whole thing, because it's, there are just so many candidates. And as you say, we can't, it's not, it's not Warren versus Biden, frontrunner, centrist versus lefty and surgeon. It's not that yet. But, but that's certainly going to be, that's certainly going to be a lot of what people are excited to see because they have been on the same station. I totally agree with you. I think she is the candidate who's moving, but she's also the candidate who really hasn't had to answer a lot of tough questions lately. because she took on so much water at the beginning of the campaign,

mostly because of the Native American thing. Yeah. And there was this whole moment where everybody gasped and went, oh my gosh, she can't win. This is a fatal problem for her in this campaign. Trump was attacking her. And even Democrats were, there's just no way. And then she sort of has been on this quiet trajectory

where she's just been showing off policy acumen. I think she's the best debater on the Democratic stage by far. I think she's the most facile debater. She has the best command of she knows what she believes, unlike a lot of candidates on that stage. Yeah. And she can just debate anybody, you know, run circles around anybody in that forum. I would like to see her. Electability, by the way, is not a bad question.

I know Joe Biden wants to make that the only question. It's not even certain that he's the most electable guy against Trump. But are you going to win the general election seems like a decent question? Yeah. And how are you going to win it? That's not stupid, right? That's not just horse race. That's Democratic voters have an interest in that.

But that will be fascinating. I just like the idea, too, that she's going to be challenged not by the John Delaney's of the world, who were just kind of like shoved into the wrestling ring, like those guys used to wrestle on Thursday nights against the famous wrestlers and get squashed in three seconds. I mean, what if, you know, Kamala Harris is in there, right? Biden's in there. Bernie, you know, now you've got, it feels like there's just legitimate opponents and people that are, least, you know, in her zip code on the debate stage. Yeah, I think that's right. I think I mean, I think we will, I mean, I think the moderators, the format of the debate, I think is going to be

really significant, whether or not they, depending on how much time they give to everybody whose name we did not just mention. But I, but I, but I think that, you know, we stand to learn a whole lot. We stand to learn a whole lot. And I think that, you know, there will be, I think regardless of how it goes. I feel like we will be talking about, or the media will be discussing this as a referendum on the Warren campaign in the, in the aftermath of the debate. Someone who will not be overstepping their time limit, segue. His billionaire coffee guy Howard Shultz. Yeah. He had toyed with running as an independent and or Democrat killer in this election. But on Friday, he wrote on his website, not enough people today are willing to consider backing an independent candidate because

they feared doing so might lead to reelecting a uniquely dangerous incumbent president. Congrats to Howard Schultz for belatedly attaining self-awareness. That is the most self-aware thing he has ever said. I didn't even see that statement

until you just read it. Because all I read was people saying that he was dropping out because he was worried that he might swing the election towards Trump. He actually said something very different than that, which is that

he was like preemptively blaming the electorate for swinging the election towards Trump if he ran. It wasn't that he was like, oh, me running might achieve a conclusion that's the opposite of what I desire. That's the self-aware answer.

His was like, people aren't willing to consider me as a viable candidate because they're so worried about Trump getting reelected. Well, anyway, I guess that's sort of self-aware. It was a big word salad of a letter that had been kind of assembled from 100 different candidate dropout speeches because it was this whole thing of like,

you know, my time is better spent elsewhere. And, you know, I, I, I see, I saw a path in the unprecedented frustration of today's electorate. I mean, it is really something that I do not want to quote at all. But, but, but that is it. I mean, do we think this was the worst presidential campaign of the cycle? Eric Swalwell's was not good.

But I feel Schultz may have done the least with most, as in most money. Yeah, that might be true. I mean, I think, I mean, Schultz was just like a uniquely. exasperating, if not terrifying, candidacy for, you know, most of the, you know, coastal liberals that I think you and I encounter on a fairly regular basis because he was so, they had such a lack of self-awareness. Not the, I mean, the fact that he was teasing an independent campaign before he had even like, you know, left the, the, the democratic race, which just angered lots of people. But even before that, the fact that he was running, like, So like these, like, he's not the only one, but the fact that he, that he could have so much money and so much access and still be running such a wrongheaded campaign for 2019. It just, he, he, it lent itself to parody, right? That he was too rich and removed from reality to realize that he was, what he was doing was, was idiotic. He, his argument, of course, was that Democrats have moved too far left, which was an argument others were making kind of more tacitly, including Biden.

Also, I think a problem for him is a billionaire. Tom Steyer sort of took over the billionaire who's wasting his money lane. CNN notes that Schultz had three back surgeries and was recovering all summer. So there was a physical element as well on Politico's Jake Sherman tweeted, real news. Howard Schultz was not running for president. He hadn't held an event in months. He no longer had staff. So I guess it's a good question to ask, which campaign existed less?

Howard Schultz's or Wayne Messums? Should we do a Wayne Messum segment? you as fascinated by him as I am, mayor of Miramar, Florida, who is kind of sort of somehow running for president, but really not? I am certainly not as fascinated as you seem to be. I'm all about doing a segment, though.

All right, we're going to do it next week. David, I want to talk about Lana Del Rey, though. She has a new album out. Yes. It's called Norman Fucking Rockwell. What a great title. You can read Lindsay Zolads' excellent review at the ringer.com. Another critic who weighed in, though, is Anne Powers,

who had a long essay on NPR's website. Lana Del Rey shot back on Twitter. Here's a little side note on your piece. I don't even relate to one observation you made about the music. There's nothing uncooked about me. To write about me is nothing like it is to be with me. Never had a persona. Never needed one.

Never will. Del Rey adds, So don't call yourself a fan like you did in the article and don't count your editor one either. Now my first reaction was that this was a Streisand effect moment almost worthy of Brett Stevens You don't like the review Okay, why don't you tweet it out so everyone will read the review I saw Daily Telegraph critic Neil McCormick says

I have to thank Lana Del Rey for introducing me to the superb critical writing of Ann Powers That's nice Yeah My other reaction though was and tell me what you think of this is This to me was healthy and happy because here's a music critic doing what a music critic does. She's doing her thing. She's saying exactly what she wants.

And then the artist gets mad. And that's not a, I know that's like a trending topic on Twitter, but that's not a controversy. That's healthy. That's what should happen. That's that's kind of what journalism and reviewing should be. And I don't know about you, but there's so much fanboy, fan girl. going on of culture writing right now where the writer and whoever the artist is,

whether a movie director, TV person, whatever, seem to be moving in sync. It seems to all be this kind of appreciation, publicity, apparistic. I think that's fine for me to a point. But it was almost refreshing because this just felt like Pauline Kale reviewing a movie and the director getting mad. And you're like, great, great.

That's okay. That's nice. That's what it should be. Anyway, that was my takeaway. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it was a, I think that, you know, I speak as someone who's listened to all of about three quarters of a song from this album. And I'm no expert music critic or a particular fan of Lana Del Rey,

although she's definitely that has like the whatever vague music championship belt is awarded at the ringer.com at this moment in time. I read Lindsay's piece, loved it. Lindsay actually directed me to this piece, and I thought it was really, I thought it was an incredible piece too. I thought that even more than just like, I mean, maybe this is, maybe I don't give, you know, readers enough credit. Maybe I'm not, maybe it's, this is more of a personal statement, but I think more than anything else, Lana Del Rey alerted me to the fact that this review should be read as negative. I didn't even, I didn't think it was a particularly negative piece or particularly, you know, like, different. difficult piece. It all made a lot of sense to me, just understanding who, vaguely who she is in the,

in the music, the pop culture landscape. But yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that you're right. I think that, I think that her reaction to it was a sort of empowering movement, I mean, moment for criticism. I mean, it, it, it, it showed that they're, you know, especially if you read the piece, that you can be deeply thoughtful about an album, about a musician, about music in this exact moment in time. And yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be, not everything has to be a sort of, a sort of love letter.

And I don't mean that, again, like you said, it's not dragging anybody else. I think some of the best writing that we have on the internet is, it comes from that sort of fans' perspective. But, yeah, I thought it was, it's a very interesting moment. And one has to feel like a very deliberate, I mean, a very deliberate choice for Lana Del Rey and a very interesting one.

So I'm not exactly sure what she was trying to do. But yeah, I mean, yay music criticism. Let's get to it. Yeah, and that's another part of this, right? Music criticism has been so degraded, not because the critics are bad, but because the world has changed so much. And it's probably, I think we both agree, been further degraded than, certainly than TV criticism, which now seems like that, or food criticism, which seems like now, like, the two best jobs in journalism. Sure.

But certainly more than movie criticism, which has had its own kind of existential, what the hell are we doing here moments over the last 15 years. But music, just because the way the industry's changed and everything. And I do like what you said about the Ann Powers piece because you're right.

It wasn't like, you know, Anne Powers, you know, music critic shreds Lana Del Rey and Lana Del Rey snaps back. It was, music critic has a complicated, interesting reaction to Lana Del Rey. And Lana Del Rey says, I don't think you get me.

I don't think you understand me. I think you understand me, but you don't. Again, that's fine. Nothing wrong with you. That's good. I like that. I like that kind of reaction. It just feels somehow more interested.

But anyway, we're checking out and certainly read Lindsay's piece on the ringer. David, I have a segment here called Eric Trump's reporting tips for young journalists. the president's other son. I like the story. Yeah, he really thought he had something on Thursday when he tweeted an email that Washington Post reporter David Ferenhold had sent out to a member of the Trump organization. Eric Trump tagged Jeff Bezos in his tweet, which is pretty funny. Here's what Ferenhold actually wrote to a member of the Trump organization. I'm very sorry to bother.

I'm a reporter for the Washington Post and I cover the Trump organization as a business. As a part of that, I try to make sure every Trump org employee has my contact hit from me. You know the company so much better than I ever could. I'd like your help to make sure I don't miss anything important. If you ever want to get in touch with me, I'd be glad to talk on background dot, dot, dot, all my contact information is below, including details for how to reach me on encrypted apps. Also, if you ever want to send me documents anonymously, you can do it online at this site or just do it the old-fashioned way.

Send a no return address package to the street address below. Thanks very much for your time, David Farenthold. I hate it when people try to teach journalism on Twitter. that. Journalists included. Yeah. Yeah. Don't know.

No, you only, it's only journalists. Don't, don't teach me. I skipped all the journalism classes for, I just, please don't teach. But I kind of want to make an exception for Eric Trump, who can be an associate professor of journalism in my imaginary school any day. Because what a great free lesson for investigative reporters, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, I mean, you look at this.

I love this because not only is Farronhold laying it out there, I love the flatter in here. You know the company so much better than I ever could. I'd like your help to make sure I don't miss anything important. That's just pure investigative reporterese right there. You know, just to, you know, you know, you functionary in the Trump organization, you know this so well. So if you just drop me that encrypted email, I'm sure we could make sure I get all the facts right. Yeah.

I guarantee that this email will be cut and pasted. lot by aspiring investigative journalists. I thought that it's, you're right, it's simplicity and it's a, it's a, complimentary tone, I think, is very instructive. But it did, it reminded me a little bit of like journalist, which was a thing in the now distant past. God. Yeah, I mean, there's other things that I, that I'm not, that are springing to mind

immediately. but you know, the journalist under fire motif has its moorings in reality. And this just feels like one of those things where like you tweet the thing out with the implication that there is something much more devious in what you're attaching than what really exists. And, you know, a lot of people are going to see that tweet and just be like, yeah, yeah, those journalists. Look at them breaking all those journalistic rules trying to take down the president illicitly. I don't think this was, I don't think this was nearly the, nearly the, you know, open and shut case that Eric Trump thought it was or that, you know, some of those previous examples might have been. But, you know, I'm sure he got, I'm sure he got some retweets out of it. I'm sure you got some follows. Maybe that's all I really wanted. This is the nicest David Farenthold will ever see. Yeah. He's like, I mean, that guy's a killer, right? Yeah. He's like, whoa, he sounds like a nice man here. No, and I, and I think, I think the bigger lesson here is in the, in the, Trump Fox News fantasy world where journalists are forming a fifth column against everything that's holy and pure in the United States.

Yeah. If you just actually showed what they did and if you actually sent their emails around, people would be alternately, one, convinced that journalists aren't evil or two, just bored out of their minds, probably two. Because it's really, there's really, there's really not that much nefariousness going on. it's really just a lot of people that are pretty boring doing a lot of good work. That's all it is. It's like that New York Times,

that's what the New York Times is trying to do with the Showtime doc. It was just like, what if we just showed journalists working? Yep. And sort of demystify all this and, and you get emails like this. And by the way, you and I haven't done anything interesting today.

We worked hard all day, but I doubt we did anything that's worth, you know, sending out his email or putting on a video. Yeah. It's not that interesting. It really isn't. And I guess if that.

accidentally convinces the public and, you know, bully for, bully for Eric Trump. All right, David, think progress. Now sadly added to the list of stuff that used to exist and no longer exist and has cost a bunch of journalists or jobs. Do you want to update us a little bit on what happened and what we should think about that whole situation? Do I?

Yeah, I mean, listen, Think Progress shut down, which is a sad thing, I think, for liberal journalism. Think Progress was found in 2007 as this, I think there's a quote from the Daily Beast, an editorially independent project of the Democratic Party think tank Center for American Progress. It has run a deficit for some time. There's a lot of vagaries about that, but the beast had previously reported that they were looking at a $3 million gap between revenues and expenses in 2019 alone. And then there is this conspicuous aside. of which $350,000 had come via shortfall in ad revenue. So there were over $3.5 million or $2.5 million that were not accounted for that were never thought to be covered by ads.

Right. I mean, so this is just donation money and anything else or just, you know, running an enormous budget. Judd Lagoon, who founded the site and then left last year to start a newsletter. I guess he initially, he started the whole enterprise. as a newsletter before it was picked up by CAP, but left to start another newsletter called Popular Information, said that Think Progress, quote, wasn't built to be a profit center. So it wasn't surprised they couldn't find someone else to back it. I mean, they were looking for a new publisher, a new benefactor, a new angel investor to kind of keep the site going, and they could not find anyone. You know, this isn't the first website, the first, you know,

established URL that we've seen in recent years that hasn't been able to find someone to, who wanted to invest. I don't know if that means that there's, you know, that you get a better return your investment by creating a new property or if there are other reasons why this one didn't work. You know, it is,

this was a proudly progressive website. And the beast, in the beast piece about it, They say that there was a sense that the election of Donald Trump in 2016 would spark a boomlet for the site. But it opened the piece and everything you read about this, read about Think Progress would constantly say that the site rose to prominence in the shadow of the Bush administration and helped define progressivism during the Obama years. It made me think about the story we covered not long ago about Breitbart's traffic dropping off. And I kind of wonder if like, you know, if there's an expiration. date on opposition media?

Do you just get one or two presidential cycles? And then, you know, there's not, you know, people find different websites to go to. I don't know. What's your take on this whole thing? Well, I mean, I guess I was, it was one of those that did this have to happen? And I saw a lot of people point this out on Twitter that Tom Steyer was until August, a board member at the Center for American Progress. And a lot of people pointed out, wait a second, what if instead of dumping a hundred

million into a presidential run that's probably going to be useless and worthless. What if he just bought Think Progress? What if he just made up the $3 million shortfall? Wouldn't that be a good idea? Yeah, one thing. Because to some extent, sites like this and, you know, it's precursors, which is journals like the New Republic and the Weekly Standard depend on a patron. It's going to be hard for them to make money.

It's going to be somebody who decide this is important enough that I want to lose money, a little bit of money on this every month and every year. So why is there really not a liberal patron out there who thinks this is important and all these people? That kind of surprises me. Yeah. And there's just so much anti-Trump money floating around in the world right now that it's hard to believe that a site like that did a ton of great work wouldn't have somebody

who would just, you know, sort of take some version of that site. say, let's do it. It is, that is very strange when you put it that way. I mean, I wonder if these people, I mean, the potential investors, the potential donors, the Tom Steyers of the world are constantly being courted for their money, right? I mean, and one, and maybe maybe it's the case that you just hear so many, you just have so many presentations about the most, the most current, the most modern, the most technologically sophisticated way to spend your money to positively affect the world and the way that you think it should be affected. You know, maybe someone coming along and saying, do you want to buy a blog doesn't have a whole lot of urgency to it.

I mean, despite all the wonderful things that this website has done over the year. Yeah, it's not as satisfying as do you want to start an impeachment drive or do you want to join the Yang Gang or something like that, I think. Because it just doesn't seem like, it doesn't seem like advocacy in the same way or doesn't seem like it has the same emotional payoff. But you know what? It may be better in the long run than throwing money at any. presidential campaign or it's something that's just not going to do anything. Yeah.

It's interesting. You're right. I mean, I guess it's the problem, the hard thing about a thing like that is, is explaining it to people. That's why I think you need the rich patron who's like, oh, I like, I like, I know exactly what it is or what it could be and I'm behind that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. One of the things that sort of, you know, I enjoyed when I was reading, you know, all the various postmortems about Think Progress. I actually ended up on, I think, on their Wikipedia page where it said, in its early years,

Think Progress included a daily newsletter that include a recap analysis of major political news and the blog Wonkrum, which was published until 2011, before being subsumed into the main site, I believe. But there's a nice history of blogging or history of web publication that this is, that you can kind of trace through Think Progress.

There's also a lot of attention given to its notable, alumni who are almost too numerous to mention. I mean, there's a lot of really significant writers who came out of that site. Definitely. But, but, you know, there's all, but this is, but it, it was such a sort of, it existed at such a similar moment, not just for progressive politics, but for like writing on the internet. That part of it, I think, was just like they were, they were hiring in like the mid-2000s in Washington, D.C. when people, when like good, brilliant people were flocking there to become a part of the new media establishment, you know.

So a lot of people sort of, a lot of people, for a lot of people, that was their first great job. You know, that was the first opportunity they were given. And, you know, the site will, you know, always be significant because of what it's done in the past. It does feel like a moment in blogospheric time when you name part of your site, walk room. Yeah. We laugh, but at the time, that made perfect sense. Like, oh, walk room. I mean, so much time was spent.

read some policy writing. Yeah. So much time was spent like designating the subsections, right? I mean, if you were a writer for a site, the best, like, the best thing that could happen to you was to be given your own sub blog on the site, right? I mean, and later those things became verticals, which are now, which now don't really exist widely anymore. It's more about identity, you know?

And I mean, except in the biggest of publications, obviously. But yeah, I mean, it was, it's definitely a moment in time. All right. let's do David Shoemaker guess is a strain pun headline. I was going to say we're about a half a second late, David, with that moan. Friday's headline was fair way to heaven. And as usual, listeners are way better and smarter than we are about all this

headline stuff. Jason Hodgert and with a side of pod, excuse me, said the headline should have been, mind if I pray through. Mind if I pray through. That is good stuff. and probably better than actually fair way to heaven. Today's headline, David comes from Ryan Hand.

It's from The Guardian story by Carrie Paul. And I think I can just read you the somewhat baffling subheadline. Oh, no. And let you do the rest of the work. All right, here it is. I cleaned it up slightly. But here goes. Judge finds that a full body banana costume sold by an Arizona company.

You're with me so far. a full body banana costume sold by an Arizona company may be too similar to one originally sold by a New Jersey costumer. Let me just simplify that because that's a little wild. Judge finds that a full body banana costume sold by one company may be too similar to one sold by another company. This is all happening. Wait, this is in the Guardian?

Just to be clear, is there a British angle to this that I'm missing? or is this just happened to be in the Guardian? It seemed to be a San Francisco-based correspondent. Okay. Okay. You know, I assume this was this appeared elsewhere and we are doing, uh, ye old aggregation of funny story thing. Um, but anyway, David, what is the Guardian strained pun headline?

Um, banana, I don't know why I immediately went to one banana two banana, which is not, it's a one potato thing, but it's the banana, banana split song. I think it was one banana. Um, I'm guessing it's not, I'm guessing it's not, I'm guessing. It's not one banana T-O-O-O-Banana question mark. No, it is not. Okay, so, okay, there's, there's a, someone has a banana, a full-bodyy banana costume that's too similar to another banana costume.

Is it something with like... This is happening legally, I would, I just want to emphasize. Right, I know. Is it some sort of like banana split, banana, um, uh, it's not like a yellow, no, uh, banana split banana peel banana is it like a monkey bit oh wait are you reacting to banana peel oh oh oh oh um something appeals uh appeals court oh uh flip it around flip it around the court of a court of appeals

court of appeal court of appeal oh i like the guardian then tried to do just do a little too much so it's actually court of appeal colon nasty split over banana costume leads to legal monkey business We really didn't need the last part. Just just, you did it. Declare victory and go home. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Jim Cunningham. Reminder, we're back Thursday night, late night,

with a Democratic debate reaction pod that will naturally contain lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. David, there's nothing uncooked about me. To write about me is nothing like it is to be with me. Wait a second. Never had a persona. Never needed one.

What? Never will. Do I? Uh-huh. So don't call yourself a fan like you did in the article, and don't count your editor one either. Definitely.