The Press Box - The Cult of Jen Psaki and the Era of Mass Fame

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Bryan and David dissect Chris Hayes’s piece in The New Yorker, "On the Internet, We’re Always Famous." They discuss how the internet has changed our social life and talk through how it's brought us to an “era of mass fame” (0:31). Then, they talk about the cult of Jen Psaki and her role as both White House press secretary and social media sensation (22:38). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs for the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here along with producer Erica Servantes. David, sometimes when I see that highly lauded think piece come across Twitter in the afternoon, like, nope, don't want any part of that. I do not want to think piece right now as part of my day,

especially when it's written by somebody who is very famous. That makes me check out. Yeah. But I made an exception for a Chris Hayes New Yorker story called On the Internet we're always famous. Yeah. And I'm glad I did. I'm glad we did.

Because Hayes has done a couple of interesting things here. He writes a 10,000 foot piece about what the internet and social media have done to us, which is a familiar genre, but he also has a meditation about fame and what it means in 2021. Turns out it's not just for people who have their own MSNBC shows and are well regarded by smart political Twitter. Fame is kind of for everybody. Right. That's what he's writing about. Let's start at the beginning of his essay, because I think you and I have a lot to talk about here.

Chris Hayes starts with early blogging, George W. Bush administration blogging. And the idea there was that blogs were going to save us from television, which was dumb. Blogs smart, blogs nerdy, blogs wonky, TV, especially TV news, dumb. We now finally we have the solution to our problem. As Hayes writes, that's not what happened to oversimplify. here's where we ended up.

The internet really did bring new voices into a national discourse that for too long had been controlled by far too narrow a group. But it did not return our democratic culture and modes of thinking to pre-TV logocentrism. The brief renaissance of long blog arguments

was short-lived and honestly it was a bit insufferable while it was happening. The writing got shorter and the images and video more plentiful until the internet birthed a new form of discourse that was a combination of word and image, meme culture. I think that critique is right as far as it goes.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think what you saw with that, I don't even know if that, is that, is that internet, is that web 2.0? Is that web, is that in the, is that 1.0 still?

I don't even remember. I lose track. Those early days, the Bush era blogs, it was kind of like anything else in media or in life. You'd find the thing that sets you apart. And that's sort of what draws, that's what,

what makes you famous. And then once you get famous, you can either choose to still be the indie rock band or the, you know, restaurant that only serves hot dogs. Or you can expand the menu and keep growing and growing and growing.

And before long, you know, your hipster hot dog restaurant starts looking increasingly like the cheesecake factory, you know, because you keep, if you're pursuing success and

growth in some conventional way, uh, those things sort of end up, those two lines intersect at some point. And, uh, I think that's sort of what happened, you know,

with internet discourse broadly defined. I think that's what he's getting at, right? Yes. By the way, in your metaphor, does a hot dog wind up costing $27 like every entree at the cheesecake factory?

My hipster hot dog is going to be really overpriced. But come with a lot of food and actually make two or three meals. Yeah. It's going to be. It's a number of hot dogs and you'll end up taking a lot of hot dogs home if they don't just, you know, go bad in the backseat of your car. Should we just stipulate because I think this is going to happen in one year and 10 years and 20 years from now that nothing will save us. Frogging didn't save us. Twitter didn't save us. Nothing will save us. But whatever new technology comes along will create something that while it sucks a lot is also way better in the aggregate than what we have. had before.

So blogging world was way better than a world that was really shallow and run entirely by television or almost entirely by television. Right. And social media world has a lot of just brainless time suckiness to it. But it's also probably better than a world of instapundit and Madaglaces. Because they're just so much more to find out there. Yes. Yeah, I would agree with that.

Yeah. in the aggregate. Anyway, let's go on with Chris Hayes here for a little bit. He says, the most radical change to our shared social lives isn't who gets to speak. It's what we can hear. Dot, dot, dot, dot. At any single moment, just about anyone with a smartphone has the ability to surveil millions of people across the globe. It's true. It is. It's a good point. Now, he is speaking from the point of view of someone who enjoys a bit of fame. And Hayes fastens on to a subgroup of people online that will be familiar to famous people

like Chris Hayes and also unfamous people like you and I, David. He calls them people we don't know and who somehow know us. They pop up in mentions, comments, and replies on subreddits, message boards, or dating apps. Most times, it doesn't even seem noteworthy. You look down at your phone and there's a notification

that someone you don't know has liked a post. You might feel a little squirt of endorphin in the brain, an extremely faint sense of achievement. Yet each instance of it represents something new as a common human experience, for their attention renders us tiny gods. The era of mass fame is upon us. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean, we talk about it, other people with podcasts on networks such as ours, such as ours talk about it almost offhandedly. But it's, it is a real thing that I think we've all, everybody with any sort of public profile has had to grapple with,

right, that agree to which, the degree to which you let that endorphin rush sort of control your life. Yes. And also what he's talking about is the transfer from the old idea of fame where somebody like George Clooney has lots of people he doesn't know that are interacting with him and liking him either literally or in the digital way. to basically every journalist having this direct line to people like that.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, the likes that people hand out are unlimited, but they are a sort of currency. And, you know, if you start a new blog or start a new podcast or start new anything, I mean, one thing, one concept that someone will be pushing on you is just frequency, right? If you're out there every day, doing a new show every day, you will have more, you know, you'll have more opportunity to get the attention of a potential audience. And the reason why I say that is because George Clooney's public presence is incredibly limited, right?

He will do a couple of interviews before a movie. So no matter how many people push like in whatever theoretical way on that, they still have a trillion likes to give out between one interview and the next, right? And everybody who's out there with open arms could potentially be grabbing those likes and they're the same currency as the ones that the Clooney gets. It's interesting you say more because I see this was almost every podcast in particular, including our podcast,

is that when you tell people, and I've been this carnival barker on our Twitter account before, hey, we've got an emergency podcast coming. We got something special for you guys coming. That is kind of the way you interact. with people you don't know but like you online. I got more for you. Yeah.

Got a bonus episode for you. Got an emergency podcast for you. And it goes to what you're talking about. The actual famous person is elusive and kind of around. So the way you sort of, you know, find your own little fame in this world is to be around all the time. And by the way, you know what the funniest part of the funniest manifestation of that with journalists to me?

We may have talked about this before. is joke culture online, whether it's an NFL Sunday or basically any day of the year, that journalists are online and generating a joke about the day's events about every 20 minutes or so or every 30 minutes. And that's just the way you interact. They're doing analysis about what their expertise is, but they're also just making a joke. And you're just like every like 15 minutes, you just look at their count. It's like boom, boom, boom, joke about the news.

It's like Jay Leno out there doing a monologue. Yeah. You've kind of pieced out on that from the wrestling perspective. You might have been slightly in on that like five years ago or something. Yeah, for a long stretch, for sure. But I really admire that you're not. And it's because it's just so strange, but it's almost like, how do we game the kind of fame, you know, currency? Like what do people?

I don't have anything to do right now. I have an article to write. I don't have a television show to tape. Or maybe you do. Maybe you have an article to write. But right now I can go straight to it. Anyway, as Hayes writes, in the same way that electricity went from a luxury enjoyed by the American elite to something just about everyone had, so too has fame, or at least being known by strangers, gone from a novelty to a core human experience. This is the way he sets up fame-seeking, David.

The star seeks recognition from the fan, but the fan is a stranger who cannot be known by. the star. Because the star cannot recognize the fan, the fan's recognition of the star doesn't satisfy the core existential desire. There is no way to bridge the inherent asymmetry of the relationship, short of actual friendship and correspondence,

but that, of course, cannot be undertaken at the same scale. And so the star seeks recognition and gets instead attention. So you see what he's saying there. All of us who are in the internet world or in our business,

had this idea we want to be recognized. Yep. We want David says, I want to be known as a good writer and a good podcaster and a good art director and I say the same kinds of things. But we can never get that recognition because the kind of people that we're playing to, we don't know them. But what they can give us is attention. Mm-hmm.

Through the likes. And so it creates this bizarro idea of fame and fame seeking. and what Hayes puts in this piece is that Donald Trump is sort of the ultimate creation of this. Yeah, I think this is a really good point. He could not get the recognition he wanted, but he realized what he was really good at getting his attention. Now, none of us are our brains are hopefully not that rotted. But I do see lots of people and I'm probably- No, no, and Trump could get the attention and then on some level begins to mistake one for the other.

I think that's the important point, right? It's never going to fill, I think, I think Hay says this, it's never going to fill that kind of gaping hole in your soul or heart or whatever else, but it's easy to mistake one for the other. Easy to mistake one and easy to let attention seeking become kind of your dominant mode of existence. By the way, just is a total sidebar, but it does in some ways, when you talk about it this way, it sort of legitimizes or it helps you understand the sort of insular Twitter work, that we've talked about on more than one occasion where writers just seem to be playing to other

writers, right? Because at least with those people, you're getting a sort of recognition. You know, it's not like these are either humans that you've met or humans that you feel like you know because of friends in common and careers in common and whatever else. And so the interactions do have a certain different sort of emotional payoff than that same interaction with a stranger. It tips a little more toward recognition. Yeah. Than attention. I think to his point here too is that he comes around to is that we're not going to turn into Donald Trump, but it's easy to then when you experience internet attention to seek internet attention for its own sake. You're like, wait a second. I got lots of attention on Tuesday.

I don't have, I didn't get as much today because I was busy or I had a lunch appointment or whatever it was, how can I get the same attention I got yesterday, today that I got yesterday. And that becomes a lot of journalists driving force. By the way, it's really a little bit weird with journalism, I think, in particular. Journalists have always been attention seekers. But they allegedly often have a more noble goal than, aha, hey, everybody, hey, hey, right over here, right over here. But on the internet, that's what they are.

That's what we are. Happy to use that pronoun here, because I think every. everybody, don't you think, winds up in that boat at some point. Of attention seekers. Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to not, well, I mean, right, in the present day, it's hard to have, I mean, when you have a job like yours or mine or like ours, you very literally interact with people on a social media team that have, you know, objectives. And maybe they're not saying, Brian, go make more jokes like you made yesterday.

you're really driving engagement, but you hear them talking in that language about, you know, the main accounts of the, you know, of your, of your employer and that sort of thing. And so it does affect the way you think. But I think that it's more, I think it's maybe it gets you in a more molecular level when you're, or at least got me the kind of the early days of social media before I had any sort of, you know, numbers or data to back up what I was feeling. but when you're sort of just feeling your way through life on Twitter, you know, and you don't know. I mean, you honestly don't have any concept of what recognition looks like for the most part.

You know, you're young. You're, you're, uh, so many of the people that came up in our generation barely knew what like a bullpen was or what, like, a media office environment was. They don't know what, you know, a slap on the back from a boss feels like, you know? And it's, and it is a, uh, and certainly the, I, like the old. measures of recognition, everything from letters, from readers on one end to like award trophies on the other end, all that is totally outmoded, right? So we're just all kind of figuring out as we go along. And I think everybody goes through that when they sort of start creeping up the follower count on places like Twitter. Two more notes on what the internet has done to our brains.

I read this essay over the weekend by Anne Helen Peterson that is about revenge bedtime procrastination. Oh my God. Are you, David, a victim of revenge, bedtime procrastination. I don't know. Victim's the right word. But it's so funny because as soon as I start reading this, I was like, you know exactly what she's talking about. You need to go to sleep. Especially dads like you and I, we need to go to sleep. That is an important thing we need to do because otherwise tomorrow we are not going to be at our, not going to be our best selves. But what do we do, David? we sit in bed and we pull out our phone. And are we reading the novel that we really want to read,

the book we've, we've missed that we'd love to catch up on? No, we're not. I think the official answer is, well, not yet. We're going to get there, but first. Yes.

And she identifies this in it. It says, I'm just going to do this for a while. Then I'm going to read, do my reading or watch whatever, you know, movie I need to watch. And then I'm going to go to bed. What happens is the,

web scrolling, Twitter scrolling, social media scrolling, then becomes like 45 minutes to two hours. So you don't do the thing you want to do. You don't get the sleep you need. And in fact, as she makes a point in this piece, you're doing something that you really don't like.

Mm-hmm. Like you were not even really enjoying the experience in the moment. Mm-hmm. But that's what you do. Yeah. Revenge bedtime procrastination. destination.

It's just scary. It's when someone identifies something like that. But yeah, that's a real thing. You also sent me this tweet from Marlowe Stern of the Daily Beast. Oh, yeah. Speaking of what the internet can do to you. Marlowe Stern got an email, it looks like, from internet person Michael Tracy. The email reads thusly, hello, or hey, Marlowe, hope all is well.

nice touch. I'm writing a post about you for substack. The basic thrust is that almost everything you produced journalistically is worthless aggregation garbage, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to address that before publication. Thanks, M.T. I don't even know what to say. It is, I mean, it's strange that there's so much of the internet is this, right? And for

all the sort of outrage, I guess, I hesitate to use that word about the substack wave and the sort of personalities that are attached to it. I think it gets left behind a lot is that not just substack, but so many of those people and people in different forms of sort of emerging media are all just sort of like coasting on this really insular sort of schoolyard sort of, well, what they would call media criticism. But it's not, it's not, I mean, Michael Tracy's not going after Marlowe Stern because Marlowe Stern, because Marlow Stern is a problem in any kind of significant way, even in his mind, it's because he's an easy target in the sort of, well, in this sort of like K-fabe of Twitter argument, right?

Like we're on opposing sides. You're bugging me today. I'm going to make a broad argument about it. But it does sort of take the sort of concept of celebrity and stretch it even more, right? I mean, even on substack. And I think later down in the comments, you see Gwen Greenwald saying, this, this, you know, substack, as you call it, referring to someone else in the comment. So I guess he didn't register that Tracy himself said, I'm going to write an article for you on

substack, I mean, about you on substack. But yeah, I mean, even on substack, even in a newsletter, even with a targeted audience that presumably knows who you are and who knows who this might know who this person is too. I don't really think that part matters. I think it's better if you don't know who they are. But that's sort of the point, right? It's like celebrity is a, it's like, when somebody talks about like the blue checkmark brigade, you know,

in a dismissive way. It's like, it's not the actual being famous. It's being able to point at celebrity and say, and like identify it and define it as a certain sort of thing that is distasteful or whatever else. It's just, it's,

I mean, anybody can fit that definition if you want them to. And I think that's, I guess that's sort of the power of it. I love the whole approach of this email. Everything you produce journalistically is worthless aggregation garbage. I'm just giving you a chance to comment on that before I write that. Usually when you send something for comment, there is something factually at stake.

Or at least, you know, if it's an argument you're making, I want to hear your side of the argument before I write this. Because even if I'm still going to write it, maybe that will make my argument sharper. or at least, you know, have, you can tell me something that will help me understand you a little bit more. I'm not sure if you're proceeding from that premise that the person you're sending that to is going to have a lot to say. Everything you produce is worthless aggregation garbage. Speaking of fame, David, coming up, I want to talk to you about what happens when a presidential spokesperson becomes a cult object. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we sell. 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 were always, always gratefully received. A big issue in the upcoming NBA season, David. A handful of players including Golden State Warriors Ford, Andrew Wiggins, do not want to get the COVID vaccine, which in Wiggins' case is mandatory for playing his home games in San Francisco. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write shots a lot. has always been an issue for Andrew Wiggins. Thanks to Rob Cosgrove, James Frazier, Jay Freeboe, and many others.

I feel like the shot selection NBA joke is now rounded all the way around the course. This may be it. That may be it because, yeah, if it's a different player, it's he finally found a shot he won't take. Yeah, you've seen many iterations of this.

Shot selection is a kind of second level NBA analysis for Andrew Wiggins. Thanks again to everyone. everyone who sent that in. And a short but sweet one, David, off a report from page six, Elon Musk and Grimes broke up after three years together. It was an overword Twitter joke to write space X. Thanks to Orioles uncensored and Ernest Toler. If you kept it simple and anticipated the drudge report headline that resulted from the split, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right in the notebook dump, David, we must

talk about the cult of Jen Saki. New York Times, Michael Grinbaum wrote a story about this. This is one of those stories I had wanted someone to write because I wanted to talk to you about this ever since the start of the Biden administration. Let me quote a little bit and we'll get into it.

Gen Sacky, 42, Grinbaum writes, is an unlikely avatar for the Smackdown Happy. We have no choice but to stand. culture of modern social media. But now the hashtag Jen Saki has 139 million views on TikTok.

And its pun of a cousin Sacky bomb has racked up more than 13 million. I didn't even qualify for the strain pun of the week. She posed for Annie Leibovitz in Vote Magazine and answered questions on the NPR show. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Olivia Rodriguez stood next to her for a briefing.

Her exchanges with a regular foil, the Fox News correspondent Peter Ducey often get memed. Grinbaum continues as one TikTok user in a clip with 65,000 likes says, Yes, Queen, Jen Sacky, let the clown Ducey have it. So. Go on. I know. First of all, this was inevitable. post-Trump.

That as much as the Trump apparatchiks would be very reasonably demonized for the way they conducted their business. That then there would be this overreaction to the people

who came in with Biden. Yeah. That they would be these fearless truth tellers who are going at Peter Ducey as opposed to just a person who is a who is giving the

White House's view of everything. Yeah. And that they would turn into these, there would be this obsession with Jen Sacky who's doing that. Again, nothing wrong with Jen Sacky. She's doing her job, whatever, as she interprets it and as the Biden White House wants her to do it. But turning her into social media sensation is really something else.

It really is. Yeah. I mean, you're right. On the one hand, it's an episode. inevitable. It's a little bit, I think, as you alluded too hard, to disentangle Jinsaki superstar from Jinsaki person who is most capable of playing a role designed by the Biden comms team, right? Which is not to say she's acting, but on some level, I guess anyone in that role is performing, right? And it is.

But it does feel a little bit weird that, I mean, listen, it was, it's a great, it was, she was brilliant casting or placement or whatever by the Biden White House to give her that role. You could kind of hear it coming even before she made her first press conferences in the days leading, I feel like in just like the week or two leading up to it when people who knew her from the Obama White House or from previous posts started preemptively singing her praises, right? Like, oh, you guys better, I think that our old friends from Pod Save America were like very high on Jin Sacki before anybody heard her speak as a bunch of. Biden representative, right? I mean, it was like, it was this, it was a big, like, you could feel the pre-approval wave coming. And then I guess, and she's very good at her job, right? The decision, whoever made it, to be smart and combative in this role is a deliberate

one and I think a very canny one. But yeah, you could, it's not particularly helpful to cast her. And this, you know, Mimi Gin Sacki destroys whoever's sitting there asking her questions, clip, roll. I will say, though, the flip side of the praise is that she was being demonized by the sort of social media right from moment one, right? I mean, and demonized, I don't want to make it too broad. I don't think anybody was accusing her of anything sacrilegious or satanic or anything like that. but they either knew from the outset that she was going to have this profile and decided to start going after from the beginning,

or maybe there's a little self-fulfilling prophecy in it. You know, you pick your enemy by going after your enemy. And that sort of elevated her to a level that maybe she wouldn't have had if people had just not paid so much attention. I think she does have a lot of value to the opposition as a totem, you know, and as the kind of forward-facing foe or villain or whatever. Sure. And what's happening here, I feel is she's getting thrust into a couple of different things. One is this Foxy universe, which was going to latch on to whoever was giving the briefings for the Biden administration.

And anybody who works for Joe Biden, that was just going to happen. The second thing was exactly what you say, that just so-and-so silences a critic sort of discourse of Twitter. Twitter. Anybody who says anything to somebody who is perceived as an opponent that is now cast in those terms no matter what it is. You know, she claps back at somebody, right? We all know, we can see those tweets coming a mile away. That was going to happen, again, pretty much no matter who was in that job. The third thing is something we've observed in sports where the briefing, which is not terribly interesting in and of itself, is televised or put online and it becomes this event.

Yeah. That has all this attention clips, post-game show, people reacting on Twitter in the moment. And then I think finally it's just the low bar that the Trump administration said. Well, there you go. I mean, part of the decision, I mean, part of the decision that the Biden White House made was to kind of fight with facts, right? And there's going to be people that disagree to what degree, what he says is political. and everything else. But to be like sort of information and content heavy and not just sort of to be dismissive

and, you know, however you would want to describe the Trump White House, non-existent, you know, in some cases as the Trump White House was, right? I mean, this is, Jin Saki is, the decision was made to more or less like flood the zone with her, you know, there's not a lot of questions that there is not recent footage of her answering and that's deliberate and I think an overall wise decision by the Biden White House and I think part of that calculus has to be that she's going to

become this sort of media character or caricature and they're willing to live with that. Yeah and look there's something that should be recognized about the value of her going out and briefing the media because it didn't happen before and in the last administration. And it should happen. And the fact that you're doing that is kind of everybody being like,

oh, wow, this is happening. This is happening. And I totally understand that. And that is commendable. I did not know until this piece that she had been an object of obsession of the Russians. This is from Michael Grinbaum's piece in the early 2010s. While serving as Secretary of State John Kerry's press secretary, Ms. Sacki's name and likeness became the subject of a widespread anti-American campaign

on Russian state TV, a leading pro-Kremlin propagandist Dimitri Kizeliyov used a television program to coin the verb sacking, meaning an American who is confused and unable to understand basic information about world affairs. In June, after he met President Biden

for a summit in Geneva, Vladimir Putin described Mrs. Ms. Saki as young, educated, and a beautiful woman who gets things confused all the time. Wow. Yeah, I did not know that she had, become a Russian state television. I think that's like a badge of honor though, right?

Maybe. Maybe. Also this week, we should note that she had the moment where reporters were asking her about the treatment of Haitian migrants at the border with the border patrol agents riding horses and using the reins to whip at them. And she comes back with that answer saying, oh, well, you know, President Biden has directed that we will not be using horse. horses anymore, is if that were the only issue at stake here.

Yeah. Not the way that migrants are being treated overall, not that you're not the differences between President Biden's immigration policy and Donald Trump's immigration policy, but we are not using horses, which is, again, some, is a good reminder that when people are briefing the media, they may be, they may have had commendable careers in their own, they may be interesting people, but we should just think of them, we should, we should, we should be very, very careful about lionizing those people. Yes.

That's exactly what I was going to say, if that's not where you went. Yeah, we have to be very careful about that. I mean, that's part of our job as journalists. I mean, talkers, whatever else, but also as just discerning members of the public. You can't. I mean, I'm not sure how many people are like wholly confused by this. I think on some days, I would say, you know, when you're putting up pro-Gin-Saki memes, you're not really.

subscribing to any sort of Jin-Saki religion. But you say that, I would say that, and I would be wrong. I mean, there are many, many people out there who are much closer to the religious end of the spectrum than I might initially assume. So yeah, we do need to be very discerning about this.

And we should, you know, be skeptical of people who are not discerning. A couple of bits of audio for you today before we go. Today, NBA teams are holding media days before they start training camp. I want you to listen to this series of questions that were lobbed to the Brooklyn Nets, Kevin Durant, and see if you recognize a familiar voice. Dave, from Basketball Digressed, Kevin, KD, why do people call you KD? Can I call you KD?

Yeah. Okay. My first name is Kevin. Right. And my second name, my last name. My last name is Durant or the D. KD. This year, what percentage do you plan on giving on the court?

90, 95, 100, 110. What are we looking at? 110. 110. I got to tell you, it's way better that way than the way that I initially encountered these questions, which were just like in written tweets. people describing the questions that he had gotten. I had no, I had no, first of all,

it took me a minute to realize it was Letterman, and that's, of course, who that was. And even once I realized it was David Letterman, I still hadn't heard the audio. And I was just like, are these, I just imagined him on his show, interviewing Kevin Durant across a table

and just trying to, just like falling on his face with jokes. Do we know what the premise here was? Is this just, is he just doing, I mean, is he just doing like stuttering John? stick for the new season of his Netflix show or what's the

that's what I confuse me because I've seen the Netflix show I've enjoyed those interviews yeah they're great but he's not doing like 1985 late night style bits for that show is he not that I have seen I mean because you know this feels like old letterman no yeah old letterman well maybe that's the point maybe he's rediscovering himself or something it was so funny because just by complete coincidence this weekend I was watching some old Letterman bits. And there was one where there were two New York coffee places that advertise themselves as the world's best coffee or the world's finest coffee. These are not gourmet coffee places. These are, we have a samovar of coffee that has been

sitting around for hours and hours. And he just went in and asked everybody like, did you come here because this has the world's finest coffee? Anyway, thank you, David Letterman. I also love how second level this is because was it the last show where we had the person asking Jillian Anderson at the Emmys if she had spoken with deceased Margaret Thatcher in preparation for her role. So we have like bad press conference questions and now we have the parody of bad press conference questions. And also one to ask, do we think KD knew this was a bit? It's so hard to tell with KD. His persistence in the whole Twitter you know,

burner account thing and his persistence in being online on Twitter as himself has led to me sort of believe that he is entirely self-aware or I'd be willing

to entertain that notion and then his reaction was that you all just let anybody in here I guess my feeling about Kevin Durant is we will never know to what degree he is on he was in on it

and I think that's sort of what makes Kevin Durant beautiful. Yes. And because he'll say he was in on it. He will say that he knew it. And I think that regardless of what he says, the truth is, Kevin Durant in on it

does not sound different than Kevin Durant caught off guard. That's what I was going to say. Either way is totally deadpan. Yeah. If I thought somebody was actually standing up to ask me, why do they call you KD? His answer would be the same as I know that's David Letterman.

And I know what's happening here. Yeah. The response would be exactly the same. One more piece of audio. This comes to us from across the pond, David. There a fuel shortage in Britain. Oh, no. Now, you and I have been watching television for a really long time. And if there is ever a fuel shortage, you and I both know that the first thing that happens

is the TV station sends someone to stand in front of the fuel pumps and do a television stand-up. Yeah. It's absolutely mandatory. It's the same as at Christmas time, someone must go and stand outside the airport and say that it's really busy inside. You get fired if you don't send someone to stand in front of the pumps. So BBC Breakfast goes to a reporter describing the petrol shortage over there in Great Britain.

The Kyron comes up on the screen and the reporter's name is Phil McCann. Phil McCann. No. Not a joke. That is his real name. Here is Phil McCann on his newfound fame. We can go live to our. reporter Phil McCann and somebody on Twitter suggesting Phil that your name isn't the best

name for a reporter there this morning because you can't fill you can. Nominative determinism isn't that what it's called? John, I said on Twitter it's like being back in year nine. Yeah, but there we go. I would never also, I would never fill a can of a can in the back of my car of petrol as apparently some people have been doing that. That's not the kind of thing I would do. That's fantastic. So congratulations to Phil McCann. for sneaking the term nominative determinism onto television. This is the idea and this is a great

thing to scroll when you're supposed to be sleeping, but it's where your name sort of determines your career. Yes, yeah. We'd be saying this if David Shoemaker had become a Nike executive. Of course. Or just like a Williamsburg

like hipster shoemaker. That would have been the real move. Just like, I make shoes the old-fashioned way. Give me your money. Yeah. And on your website says, yes, my name really is David Shoemaker. Yeah. With a little asterisk next to your name. Yeah, no, that's totally true. I just will note

this, Phil McCann is not an executive for British Petroleum. Phil McCann, by virtue of being a television reporter gets sucked into the thing where you have to stand outside the fuel pumps during a gas shortage. It is ridiculous that Phil McCann is at the gas

station to begin with. That doesn't make That is stupid. Well, it seems like, it just seems like something out of like a sketch comedy. Like, this is like a, just like a Monty Python gag or something. Maybe I'm being to, maybe I'm leaning on Monty Python because the setup of the whole thing. But yeah, it just seems like, yeah, like a series of, it's more of a juvenile thing. But you could just imagine a series of man on the street reporters who just all had the punny names, which, by the way, I would be all four.

We should just have a purely pun news network that just finds people with certain names or gives people fake names that just make the stories more enjoyable. It sounds like the British sketch comedy show that you've heard about but never seen. That's kind of what I was thinking. Yeah. Does a little Britain have a sketch like this? I don't know. No, no, no, never watched it. Speaking of puns, it's time for David Schuemaker, guess is the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Monday's headline about the upcoming Cook County assessors race between Carrie Steed. and Fritz Kegi was a steel keggy match. So good. A couple of listeners disappointed, David, that you did not figure that one out sooner. I was staring. I pulled up,

I was staring at the letters too much. I just wasn't going about it the right way. It's my fault. Today's headline comes from a bunch of people, including our friend Adam Zalanka. It's from Sports Illustrated. I can only hope the press box alum Chris Alameda was involved in writing it.

The story is this. You know Frank Gore, great NFL running back. Still playing. His son, Frank Gord, Jr. He is already playing college football. He is a running back at Southern Miss, averaging five yards of carry. So Frank has passed his talent on to another generation.

What was Sports Illustrated, strained pun headline? Generation. Just want to think. How do you pass on your talent? What is the vehicle by which you pass away? DNA, genes. Interesting word there.

Gene therapy, gene. This is Frank Gior? Frank. In fact, multiple ranks. Franks and jeans? Franks and jeans. Oh, that's great. Franks and jeans.

That's fantastic stuff. Chris Almeida, if you wrote it, just give us a wink. we'll be standing by. He is David Shumaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Eric is Servantes. We have another great book spot coming up, David. It's going to be with Eric Schlosser.

And it's going to be on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his awesome book, Fast Food Nation, the Dark Side of the All-American Meal. We're going to talk about muckraking and writing. And as we did with John Crack-Hauer this year, how a magazine story that Schlosser was assigned rather than one he came up with on his own, wound up turning into a book and helping to define his career. Speaking of which, I looked up the 1998 issue of Rolling Stone, the magazine article that became Fast Food Nation ran in, actually the first part of a magazine series. Rolling Stone had a cover line for Schlosser's story that said, the true cost of America's diet.

And then the cover photo was of Shania Twain. Rolling Stone in 1998, gentlemen, I just absolutely profound piece of investigative. journalism holding our holding society to account and Shania Twink on the cover. Plus David and I are back with more lukewarm takes about the media next week. See you then, David. All that and Shania Twain. See you later, Brian.