The Press Box - The Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates Showdown, Floating Paul Finebaum for Senate, and the Meaning of Kamala’s Book Sales

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel take a deep dive into the spirited discussion between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates centered on their disagreements about Charlie Kirk and some of his eulogists (1:27). Then they discuss the unexpected news that ESPN's Paul Finebaum is considering running as a Republican senator for Alabama, the numbers for Kamala Harris's book, WaPo's new opinion section, and more (33:21). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons, and I want to tell you about my movie podcast, The Rewatchables. We're each week, I'm joined by Ringer movie lovers, Chris Ryan, Sean Van Van Lathen, Kyle Brandt, Malley Rubin. We have a whole bunch of people on. We talk about movies. We can't stop rewatching. And now you can watch us cover these movies on video in the Spotify app. We have covered over 350 movies, including Heat, Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, Pulp Fiction.

We have some real heavy hitters coming up here in 2025. Make sure to follow us on Spotify, where you can, watch every new episode right now. Just head to the rewatchables on Spotify, now on video. Media consumers, welcome to Press Box Thursday. It's Brian Curtis. It's Joel Anderson. It's producer Kyle Kreitin. Coming up is ESPN host Paul Feinbaum going to run for Senate in Alabama as a Republican? Plus, what do Kamala Harris's huge book sales say about the state of the resistance? And yes, ideological remodeling of the Washington Post, plus a barbecue sauce-covered edition of J-School.

But Joel, I want to start by doing a little instant replay of the game of the week. Okay. No, not Bama versus Georgia. Not Ole Miss LSU? No, not Penn State Oregon either. Hmm. I'm talking about Ezra Klein versus Tanahazi Coats

on Klein's New York Times podcast. That was a big game. Top five matchup for sure. Game of the century. The dispute was over an offending line in a Klein column that ran on September 11th, the day after Charlie Kirk's murder. You remember the line well. Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way.

And if we missed Klein's message, it was also the title of that column. Yeah. Tanaugazi Coates came back. five days later and wrote a column about Klein and other Charlie Kirk eulogists in Vanity Fair. And then on Monday, they settled their dispute in the grand tradition of public intellectuals everywhere. They did a pod together. Here's a taste of Klein versus Coates. Was silence not an option? Yeah. Silence to me was not grieving with people. I felt it wasn't important as someone who is liberal as someone who's a voice, that there are moments like that. Like, I really do feel,

that's funny because you said something like this in your piece, but it was a little bit more offhanded. The political violence like that is an attack on us all. Right. And that in that moment it creates, for me, even if it's very temporary, that it's important in a moment like that to sort of, yeah, come together to try to see other people in their grief, to try to cool things down just a little bit. I feel like Skip Bayliss, I'm ready to unleash. What you tell me? Where do you want to start with Klein versus Coates? Well, first, I mean, with Silas, not an option is just an incredible bar. Like, I mean, what a line to just have off the top of your head. I'm glad that they did this

because I think that it gave everybody a chance to the extent that Ezra was capable of addressing Tanahasi's central concern which is that you know we don't have to we can grieve the death

but not tell lies about how the life was lived and I don't know that Ezra ever did it and I was just wondering if you ever thought about this as it came through did it ever seem that all of it

seemed really insincere coming from Ezra because I wonder if that was like sort of the fear that he was like, well, I'm doing this because people need to see me do this and they need to see me sit with their grief. Not necessarily that I feel it, because also that it is the most politically expedient thing to do. And that's what he, to me, he opened himself up to the accusation from both right and left that this isn't actually sincere grief. What you're doing is performing grief for people in hopes that someday they may come to your side or they may see you as a, you know, the proper arbiter in these in these sort of debates but i don't know that's what i that's what i

thought at least there's nothing that makes me go crazier than when journalists start acting like the people they cover yeah and when you talk about that motion right i need to sit with them in their grief i need to honor their grief that sounds to me something like what a politician would do Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Not what a journalist would do. Right. In that moment. Like that just, again, that's how Ezra interprets a job. Obviously, he says it in this podcast. That's how he defends himself to the extent he defends himself at all. But I'm like, is that our job? Clearly, Tana Hazi doesn't think that's the job. I'm interested in if he actually thinks of himself as a journalist. And that's fine. Like, it doesn't. doesn't have to be. Like, obviously, being an opinion writer, it borrows from a lot of different disciplines, right? Like, you can be a historian. You can be a sociologist or whatever, economist, whatever. It borrows from a lot of different ways of doing the job. So he may not, I don't know if that's a title that he wants for himself, but it is interesting. You mentioned because he

talked about talking like a politician, right? And he said we an awful lot during this thing. And I'm like, who are you talking? Are you talking about the Democratic Party? Like, do you work for the, because he said, we lost this election. We did so on. And I'm just like, okay, maybe it would have been helpful if they had been able to drill down on who he meant when he said we. That popped out to me too. I mean, he said, we ran Joe Biden again toward the end of the podcast. Yeah. And I'm like, we the Democrats? We the, we the party. But so to answer to answer your question, I absolutely believe Ezra Klein thinks he's a journalist. I think that is the title he wears.

But I think he wears it in a very different way than a lot of people do. There are journalists who think my job is to put ideas out there to argue for what I think is right and wrong. And I think Ezra does some of that. But I think there are other journalists who said my job is to help the Democrats win elections. To steer them in the right way, to diagnose what's wrong and write about the public. party right now. Right. Yeah. I mean, that that's a really, I mean, first of all, it is sort of interesting that anybody would have been to being a Democrat in public. Like, you know what I mean? There's like a journalist, right? Which is fine. Like, I mean, it's one thing to say,

I'm a liberal and I have liberal beliefs. And it's another to say, we ran Joe Biden. Like, you were part of the DNC or something, right? I can't do the, I can't do the we there. Yeah. I just can't do it. I don't. I don't understand it. Maybe we, you and me, have slipped up at some point or another. But that's not my worldview of politics or anything else. Do you think that is because, I mean, we don't, you know, this is a world that I'm wholly unfamiliar with. Like we're doing very well professionally. We don't have the kind of access that Ezra Klein has. And I do wonder, especially when you reach a certain point, like

Madaglacius, even Jamel Bowie has said, I know that certain people within the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill or reading my columns, that you become so much a part of Washington, right? Washington, not D.C. necessarily, that you come to believe that you were just a part of it all, right? And we've already talked about this is an era of writing and journalism or media content that you don't have to say no to anything. You can sort of think you can do it all. We're going to talk about that a little bit later in this show too. But you think you can do it all. And so it just, Ezra fills no compunction about saying, yeah, like, I'm, I'm in this to win political races for the Democrats, which is still just, I mean, again,

I can understand coming at that as a liberal, but acting like you're a part of the team. It's like when somebody says, man, we lost to the Cowboys on Saturday. It's like, you ain't, you can tackle nobody, but, you know. You mean we tied the Cowboys? Yeah, we tied. Excuse me, sir. Cowboys didn't actually win a game. So let me make the second part of Ezra's argument for him if I can, because he does get to that in this podcast, which is if the Democrats lose the presidency, and thus the Supreme Court, if the Democrats lose the Senate and the House, then people will be affected. Bad things will happen to people. So I think, again, I'm doing some interpretation here, but by his brain is saying you can put aside, you know, the grubby work of politics.

You can try to separate yourself and say, I'm just, I'm just putting my thoughts down on paper here. But if the Democrats don't win, the bad stuff happens. We've seen that. We're seven months into the Trump presidency and we've already seen that here. So I think that would be his argument as to why he is approaching it in the way he is. And that's totally fine, I think. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that if, again, he identifies as a liberal and says if you believe that, you know, total Republican control of all levers of federal government is a bad thing for the beliefs that I hold and the people I care about. That's fine. But again, I think the problem, and this is where Tana Hasi comes at it, is that like, you can say all of that. I think to the extent that they agree on anything, they can probably agree on that. It's the Charlie Kurt.

I was envious of what he did and he was doing it the right way. It's like, well, if that's the plan that you have for your team or your side, then maybe that's the point at which we depart. Right? Because I don't have to, I don't necessarily want to go on somebody's college campus and say, debate me, you know, you're wrong or antagonize, marginalized groups of folks. And so that's where I think the differentiation is, is that like Ezra is like, yeah, We can be on the same page about this stuff, but you don't have to say this is a model for what we should be doing, too.

Let me read to you a little more context from that initial column. You can dislike much of what Kirk believed, and the following statement is still true. Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era's most effective practitioners of persuasion. dot dot dot i did not know kirk and i am not the right person to eulogize him but i envied what he built a taste for disagreement is a virtue and a democracy liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness so to go back to your point how does ezra think about the job when i read that column

the first time i was like oh he's just saying it right there esra's saying you know what i've got the Democratic Party reading me. I've got Chris Murphy reading my column. But Charlie Kirk had this other thing, which is he had college students. He had grassroots. He had young people reading him. I can't think of that many college students who are like, you know who I love Ezra Klein? Or at least in the same way that a bunch of them loved Charlie Kirk. So to him, to me, there was a professional aspect of it. He's saying it in the columnary. I envied him, right? That he had he was appealing to people in that way and maybe that's ezra taking stock of his whole career and say look you know there's no every professional democrat is reading me right nobody like

that is reading me none of the young people are reading my influence ends there that's the edge of that's the edge of where i've gotten to i mean that's really interesting because i would argue that Ezra Klein has the ear. The thing that makes Charlie Kurt influential is not that he has a bunch of young people, it's that the Republicans welcomed him into the party, lock, stock, and bail, right? I mean, he has access to Donald Trump. He, at the time, like, you know, several years ago, they built a think tank with him at Liberty University. Like, all the people that had all the money in the Republican Party would say, well, we like this guy.

We'll get right behind him. I think like sort of his appeal to young people is maybe a little bit overstated. I don't, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, there are TP USA member, you know, chapters at college campuses all over this country. But the thing that empowered him is that powerful people were interested in what he had to say. They were willing to fund his efforts and put him in front of people. And I don't know. Like, I do think that the Democrats and the. left are a little bit more chintzy about that sort of like, remember it was a couple months ago

when it came out that, you know, some people on the, that, uh, there were left organizations that were funding some podcasters or wanted to have kind of like a pipeline. And it was actually like a debate and a little bit of a controversy because they're like, I don't know if I would take any money, right? I wouldn't take any money from the, from the DNC or whatever this, you know, the Soros branded LLC is or whatever. And, Democrats in the left are what, you know, for good reasons and maybe some antiquated notions of it are a little bit embarrassed about tying their content in journalism and media so closely with their politics. And so that's maybe maybe that is what Ezra Klein laments understandable. But again, I don't, I don't think you have, you can say that without necessarily saying, would you, would you would.

What you want is the political and cultural and social dynamics that Charlie Kirk had with the GOP, not this other stuff, I think. And I think he gets a little confused about it, right? Do you think he ever answered Coates's gripe during this hour-long podcast? No, not at all. That was a disappointment for me. Yeah. Well, I mean, because Ezra is like, it felt to me he was like singular. focused on winning elections, right, and not really considering the cost of it. And like,

well, man, they over there, they've won all these elections. They hold all the power in this country now. And this is how they did it. And he didn't answer sort of the moral, ethical question. And also, the we part of it allies a lot of like, well, who all is in that tent, right? Because when you're saying the we, well, you're necessarily probably excluding trans folk. You You're necessarily excluding people that want to have a much more liberal approach to immigration in this country. And yeah, I didn't think he's not concerned with that. He just wants to win elections. And that's what I thought he kept coming back to.

I wrote a note to Shoemaker yesterday and I said, I found myself thinking about a professional wrestling term when I was listening to this podcast. And the term is they got all their stuff in. he got all this so if it's like you know if there was a brian versus Joel wrestling match you would do all your signature moves yeah and I would do all

my signature moves and that way whatever the preordained ending of the match is we would both come out looking good oh okay I like that's a podcast thing too so even though this is about Tana Hazi basically saying you are whitewashing history sir as he did in his

Vanity Fair column right Ezra's going to get all his, you know, predetermined lines in. He had this line about it has become easier to imagine the end of the country than winning a Senate seat in Missouri or Arkansas, which felt just so workshop. Like, I'm going to come out with this big workshop thing. Yeah. Soap piece, I'm going to keep, you know, pointing toward the future and what do we do now?

And, like, he was getting his stuff in rather than us having kind of a, you know, a reckoning with what that line said and what that line missed. in that initial column about Kirk. Absolutely. I mean, again, and I think, again, once again, a lot of people are saying this on the Internet, so I don't need to necessarily attribute it to anybody in particular. But it's like very often when people are talking about Charlie Kirk's legacy,

they don't want to discuss what he actually said of the things that he did in front of people and two people, right? Again, look at that hit list, that project hit list. Like, for instance, like all the professional. and journalists and other people that are on that list and, like, you know, the kind of lives they had to lead after he identified them as somebody that was sort of like an enemy of the right. And yeah, Ezra didn't really want to engage with that. And I felt like Tanahasi was like a useful foil in that way because it's sort of sent, like he had Tanahasi to hint that and to create the heat of a confrontation. But also it's like Ezra's like, I'm moving past that now and I want to talk about what we can do to, win a Senate seat in Arkansas. It's also so fascinating how they come at these issues differently. Tanahazi taking a very deep scope of history into all his arguments.

And as we're coming back and saying, hey, you know, when you take that wide historical scope isn't, aren't you thinking a little too deterministically about the present? Right. And I thought that that also misunderstood what Tana Hossi was doing, right? Because it wasn't saying that like history is a one for one and that because something happened in 1929 that it's going to happen again today. I thought with Tana Hasi was saying is that you're not grappling with the idea that sometimes and very often liberals the left lose. Like they lose and they lose the political battle. They lose the cultural battle.

and a lot of people suffer as a result, right? Like they die, they're imprisoned, they're forced away, they're forced out of the country or whatever. And what he was saying is that that is actually the black experience, right? That like, you know, my parents grew up in a world that was fundamentally different from the one that is here now and they lived under a form of fascism.

And Ezra is not really acknowledging that like, you know, sometimes the Democrats don't do anything wrong. Like sometimes, like you just lose an election because people really gravitation. to things that, you know, seem harmful to a lot of other people, right? Like, and that's kind of where I came at it. I think the first episode we were ever on came after the election, the food that came on here, and we had to talk about that.

And I kind of hinted at that. I was just like, you know, I'm not saying that Kamala, the DNC, or the Democrats could not have done better because they absolutely could have. But sometimes people really want to see people hurt, man, or sometimes they want to see people kicked out of this country or whatever. And that is just something that. like you've got to grapple with, and it's not that you can change your platform and accommodate that. It's a great tweet by the writer Peter Rothblitz.

It's clear both men articulate their arguments entirely from a place of good faith, but their respective positions can't be reconciled, in my opinion, because Coates is a student of history and Klein is one of politics. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just so funny to hear Ezra keep coming back to like the 2010 Affordable Care Act vote. He's like, did you know that Democrats had senators from fill in the blank correct state? You know, and I'm like, so does American history just end in 2010?

That we go here? That's the scope we need to understand. Like, okay. Yeah, we're litigating the deplorables comment again. Oh, my goodness. And to me, it's so funny that he brings that up during the second Trump administration. And we're putting the blame on Hillary Clinton. Yeah.

The answer is not, well, Hillary was right. There were some deplorables, and some of them even wound up in government. Some of them wound up doing important jobs. It was, yeah, don't you think that is, you know, kind of shows you the limits of the Democrats' approach to tent building? I mean, I mean, also, it's just, it's not only, it's not a historical. It's just like a of a of the momental because we just had the president, we just had the president say, I don't want good things for my political opponents. Like, if you're talking about tent building,

like, I mean, that was at Charlie Kirk's Memorial Service, if I remember. Yeah, exactly. Like, this is right here explicitly, like, I don't want you, I don't want you in my tent, and I don't want good things to happen to you. And God knows if, and people don't have a problem with that or the people that are on that side of the political aisle

don't seem to have a problem with that language or that tenor of politics. And so it's like, you're, why are we, talking about the deplorables comment when clearly, like, you know, like, okay, you know, everybody's tense are a little bit. Everybody, the country is a cultural and political odds right now, and that is the reality of it. And it just doesn't make any sense to tut-tut Hillary Clinton saying that many years ago when you got examples right here of how that is an effective politics. Like, if you really want a copy what Charlie Kirk in them had, like Trump's giving you a blueprint

right now why are you not saying hey i don't care about the people on the right like i want them to lose i want them to have a bad time i want them to lose their farm i want soybean farmers to never sell another soybean to china you know they could be saying that but that's not what's happened that's actually not what's happening and ezra should know that related they had an interesting question about drawing lines yeah when people say certain things or hold certain beliefs are they on the other side of the line yeah and where do you do you do you do you do you draw that line. And eventually, Ezra got to the point where he said, well, where do you draw a line when all

lines seem to have disappeared in this country? And Thana Hazi responded, welcome to Black America. Yeah. Best moments of the entire podcast. Another bar, man. Yeah, it's just, I mean, I think the thing is, is that, you know, this has always just sort of been a critique of Ezra, man, that he's just not, that he is a very smart guy. I think he's a very sincere person.

But I don't think he's particularly thoughtful about certain marginalized groups and what they have faith. That's where you don't know about the, when you don't concern yourself with the history of this country, then that's kind of where you end up at. Like, you're just like, oh, yeah. You know, I know that that, the Jim Crow thing, I know that happened. But, you know, I'm talking about other history, right? Or the New Deal was great. Oh, yeah, I understand that a lot of Black American. were cut out of that because, you know, Social Security benefits weren't extended to

homemakers and stuff like that, you know, or, you know, redlining, they weren't eligible for certain home loans or whatever. He's just not, he doesn't even really grapple with that. And so he's just, you know, like, he wants to look forward because that's more interesting to him. Or to take the New Deal example, you just said, if I were a columnist writing then, what would my job have been? What would my approach to that have been? Would it have been to like, here's the way the Democrats can get the New Deal passed and to continue to build on that over the decades to come.

Or as Tanahazi said, would my approach have been to say, here are the people left out by the New Deal? I don't expect necessarily that to change what gets through Congress, but that's the right thing to say. And my job is to say that thing, whether that changes the course of political history or not.

Right. I mean, that to me is what we, get back to here again and again. Again. So what is the job of the columnist? What is the job of the public intellectual? Absolutely. Yeah. And I see, I obviously I lean more towards Ta-a-hasi on that. But it's just like that, so this is the Ezra We thing, right? It's just like, he's not, he's like, well, I'm a, I'm a part of the Democratic apparatus and let me help you to figure out. Let me help. It's the difference between let me help you sell this bill. and let me put a critical eye on it

and tell people how it will actually affect Americans. Yeah, and again, to extend the most grace we can to Ezra, I think his thinking would be pass the bill because it will do good. If you don't pass the bill, then lots more people will be left behind, right? Like, that's the way he would think about that. And that is, again, we need to have this concept on the press box called secular grace, where we just extend as much as we can

to people. And I think, you know, if we're doing a good faith reading of his theory of being a journalist, that's what it would be. I definitely think, and I should say this to make this clear in case anybody hears me wrong, I definitely think Ezra wants good things to happen for the most amount of people possibly. And that this is just one way of going about it, but that sometimes, like, yeah, you know, if you're a trans person living in Texas, you might hear what Ezra has to say and be like, what, am I actually in that we then? Like, what do I, you know, am I a part of that we? And he's not really grappling with that as a columnist or writer, right?

He's doing the work of Colin Allred or whatever. And that's, you know, something to be said for that. They go back and forth for nearly an hour. We get some absolutely all-time Coates reaction shots. I found myself just looking at the right side of the YouTube picture. the whole time. Do you think they're really friends? Yes. You do?

Yeah. I think so. I think, and I think if you read that Coates' piece in Vanity Fair, that's just the disappointment comes through. Yeah. Right. And they said they'd been texting before Coats wrote the piece. Like, Ezra didn't read about his disappointment in Vanity Fair. He read about it on his phone first, which I thought

was interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think that's really, that's sort of inspiring that, you know, because how often do you find somebody that you really admire and reach out to them. And if they do something like professionally that disappoints you that you reach out to them. That's really, I mean, you know, that's a really powerful reach out. It would move me. It might annoy me, but it also might move me as well. It would move me like two weeks later. Yeah. Right. We finally have had time to

think about it. Yeah. When you just said, I'm not just doing the easy thing, which is congrats on a job well done once again. Right. But actually, I think you were wrong here. Right. And, let me tell you why and wrong about something fundamental like this. Yeah. I mean like this is a big one to get wrong or to word in, you know, an infelicitous way again, secular grace. So like 55 minutes in, they get to this exchange about what Ezra Klein's job is very specifically. And again, this is a great thing about podcasts where you are rewarded by being a personality and by the podcast being all about you. So even when you have Tana Hazi coat sitting next to you, like, can we actually talk about my job? Yeah. Right. Can we talk about me a little bit more? Here's what Ezra had to say

about that. Can you answer that? Can you say what you, I think it's a good point. Would you tell, like, would you define for me how you see, like, what your role is? I don't know what my role is anymore. I'll be totally honest with you, man. I feel very conflicted about that question. The role I want to have is a person curiously exploring his political and intellectual interests in political peacetime. And the role I somehow have is sometimes that. But I am in the business. I'm a political opinion writer and podcaster and so on. And I'm in the business of political persuasion.

And I feel like me and the people believe what I believe, not narrowly speaking, but, you know, like the whole broad coalition have failed in a really consequential way. And I think it is... You feel like you failed in your work? I think I... I think there are places I failed. I mean, I think there are things I got right to. Like, I think we shouldn't...

Yeah. I mean, you know, so, you know, you know, for people that listen to the 25 for 25 with Jelani Cobb and he says something at the end about how Columbia didn't deserve this, right? And I agree, but also, I guess the point of contention is that nobody deserves this, right? Like nobody, you know, but we didn't ask,

when you're born, you want to be born in a time of political peace. Like, you want stability. But sometimes the time, the times call for something else. And I can understand having sort of existential angst about, like, what do you do next? Like, it's what I'm doing matter, like, is doing a college football podcast while the world around you is, you know, a flame. Is that, is that what I need to be doing? Should I be, you know, engaged in what my community? So I get that. Um, but I'm also a little bit more surprised. Like,

on the other hand, it was sort of inspiring to hear Tana Hase be much more resolute about like, with his role in the public squares, right? It was. I'll close here. I'm, and I'll echo something you said earlier. I'm glad this happened. Podcasts are rigged by the people who host them to make them sound smart, to make them sound like the smartest person in the room on every single episode.

Yeah. And I think we should normalize having exchanges like this. Yeah. where the judges go to the cards and might decide that Klein was not the winner of this exchange. Like that should happen more. Like, you know, again, it's like, I always think people are just like, you know, listeners like, God, man, that's so smart. He's so great.

It's like, you realize that's on purpose, right? Yeah, right. They are smart. But through the way the thing set up, through the magic of editing once in a while, wink, wink, they sound even smarter. And to me, when you put yourself out there like that, even if he changed the subject, even if he didn't dig in enough, I feel on what the Coates column was actually about, there is something nice about having a pot like this come out.

Man. Yeah, and I want to say this too, because, you know, you're right. Like, Ezra took a real big chance. Like, he could have, you know, he ended up putting out a piece of content under his feed that didn't make him, at least, you know, the general reaction has been that he didn't come off very well. And I think there's, that's really brave of him, right? Like, not many of me people are willing to do that and invite somebody on. To the extent that he wants to carry on the tradition of Charlie Kirk, I mean, he exposed himself in a way that could have made him not people not think as much of them as

they did prior to that. And so, I mean, if he wanted to honor Charlie Kirk, maybe he actually did it with this interview. And dude, when I started listening to this and you and I listened to podcasts for work, as we say on this press box podcast all the time. Oh my God. The doomy music that we were starting with, that halting podcast way of talking. It sounds like those old impressions of Bill Shatner. I'm like, I don't know if I'm able to do this.

I don't know if we'll be able to make it. Man, have you seen, Ezra has been, is perfected that voice over the last few years. It is so funny. Because people don't actually talk like that in real life. Well, fine. And if you were to think about it more deeply, you might understand.

All right, let's talk about another big voice, Paul Feinbaum. Man. He is the pot-stirring radio voice of college football in the South and maybe college football, period, on the SEC network on ESPN. Safe to say that we're both fans of Paul's show and of Paul himself? Absolutely. We've been on that show a number of times. Yep.

Full disclosure, each of us. Well, on Tuesday, Clay Travis, yes, that Clay Travis, released an interview he did with Findbomb. And Feinbaum announced that he is considering a career change, Joel. Finebaum might run for a U.S. Senate seat. Oh, I thought, you know, I thought he's going to try to be the Auburn football coach, because, you know, Hugh Freeze is going through it down there, but okay. That job might be open, too.

That job might be open, yeah. Instead of talking to famous Feinbaum callers like Legend, Feinbaum is going to be asking for Legends vote. Here he is explaining his thinking. It is very intriguing. I am thinking about it constantly. And that's difficult to do, Clay, as you're talking about college football. Yeah.

20 hours a week debating Stephen A. Smith, as you well know. I mean, you're sitting there talking to Stephen A. Smith, And as you're waiting for your turn, you're thinking, I wonder if I should move forward on this. So it's a, it's been going on for a couple of days or if not weeks. And it's just hard to chisel it down to make an educated decision. But to say, I'm considering it, of course, yes. Isn't it a funny image to be sitting there on first take waiting for Stephen A to finish? I mean

it's just like Libby did him do his thing I mean also like two of the greats right just yeah and Stephen A baby thinking you know where am I going to build my you know

campaign headquarters to the primary New Hampshire right and Paul's thinking about the Senate race in Alabama I mean why didn't he just start his own political podcast like Stephen A

you know he'll be a guest on straight shooter with Stephen A Smith there you go I mean what's all kinds of opportunities for ESPN people now Now as to why Feinbaum suddenly has political ambitions, he mentioned that he was affected by the murder of Charlie Kirk. He says, and I believe him on this, that while he cares about college football in serious times, he cares more about other stuff.

Yeah. Also, an unnamed person or persons in the Alabama Republican Party have been sizing him up for office. Yeah. Because that's another revelation here, Joel. Paul Feinbaum is a Republican. I've never said this before, but why am I going to hold this back? I just moved and registered in Alabama, but I am a registered Republican in North Carolina as of this hour.

And I was a registered Republican in Alabama before I moved. And you've never said that publicly before because you've never discussed politics one single time because it is frowned upon. And it's also overall not good business for somebody doing a sports show to go down that lane. Okay. I'm going to ask you. I'm going to put you in that lane. Did you vote for Donald Trump? Yes, but they also tell us not to discuss that.

Yeah. That kind of surprised me. Now, I think there's that I got bad intel on Paul Feinbaum, because somebody had previously told me that he was a Democrat. And I was just like, okay, that's why he's so quiet about his politics on air, right? Because given, I mean, and Clay Travis says it himself. I mean, he has probably 100% name recognition in Alabama. He probably talks to the most MAGA audience in this country, right? And so I just kind of thought that that's why he was a little bit more silent about it. One time he had me on the show, this might have been my most recent time. He tried to team me up for a question about politics that sort of glanced at it. And I was just like, I just kind of talked it off. Like I just like, I don't want

I don't want legend coming after me, you know, I didn't feel like that was the right audience for that. But so, yeah, I mean, aren't you surprised? I'm just, I was kind of surprised that this is who fine bomb is. I'm very surprised. And I don't claim to know him super, super well. I've interviewed him, been on the show like you. We sat down in Charlotte one time and had a barbecue lunch that I look back on incredibly fun like, because it was like two or three hours long and wonderfully chatty and funny

and everything else. And I just wouldn't have guessed it. And Clay Travis does not ask the obvious. question here, whether it's because Clay Travis is not curious about this question, or Clay Travis just assumes, of course, he voted for Donald Trump. But the obvious question is, why did you vote for Donald Trump? Right. Especially the second time, if that's what he's referring to. And I say that in a non-judgmental way, I would just be interested in knowing the answer to that question. He's going to have to talk about it. I mean, that's the thing.

Like, okay, Clay, and I will say Clay was a, I've not really consumed very much Clay Travis content. I don't know if you have. You listen to podcasts for your podcast. Yeah, right. And, you know, but he was, it was a really good interview. And some of that is just because I didn't realize how much I didn't know about Paul Feinbaum until this interview. But, yeah, man. It was a pretty good interview.

I want to interject here. Okay. Because once again, it was Clay's like, oh, but I know I'm making tons of news here, but can I just get in? And there's so much that I'm like, just let him go, man. This is, this is fascinating. What do you think? Why do you think Paul was so comfortable there? Because again, like he said things on there that he said, I've only spoken with

Burke Magnus about this, you know, at ESPN or his agent. And I'm just like, yo, what? So at the very, near the very end, he says this has been cathartic. And I was like, are you that good of friends with Clay? Or did Clay butter you up that much? Or like, is this much more strategic? And that's maybe I kind of lean towards this third idea that maybe this is a strategy, right? And I don't know what for like particular.

I have some ideas about it. But like how did Clay Travis get you to open up in that way? Well, what does every politician do if they are thinking about running for office? They float the idea. Yeah. To see how it goes over and see what the reaction is like. Yeah. Isn't it that simple?

And if you're going to do it and it's a repulsive. Republican primary in Alabama. Clay Travis. You know, conservative radio host, buddy of Feinbaum from sports radio days past. Like guy who has talked to Donald Trump and could be, by the way,

an emissary between Feinbaum and Donald Trump if this thing actually happens. Yeah. Well, this is what, this is, and Clay glances at that at the end, he's like, you know, now that you said this,

you may get a call from Donald Trump. And, and Clay, Travis is the kind of guy who could make that happen. Absolutely. And like he could he could put in a call and and you know, again, I don't know if Donald Trump is going to endorse Paul Feinbaum. We're now in really, really just got a mind bending territory here. But if that's going to happen, I would think Clay would be the go between. And if it happens, I mean, Fondbaum says at the end of it, I would have to do it. I would have to run if Donald Trump says I should run. So yeah, that was. sort of mind-blowing. Yeah. Again, it's just, it's just another reminder to just never assume that you know the totality of somebody's politics just, you know, just because they're on air, right?

Because or even in person. I mean, like I said, I spent a couple hours with a guy. Yeah. And I would have just, and again, it would have been a guess. It wasn't anything he said. I would have just said, oh, you know, and I could also, if you'd ask me, like, what are Paul Feinbaum's politics spending a ton of his career, the biggest years of his career, or the early years of his career in Birmingham

as a columnist and sports radio guy would have said it's probably the old school kind of guy who votes for some Republicans, some Democrats back before politics became what it is now. A Joe Manchin Democrat. Sure. Sure. I could absolutely believe that. Yeah, that's kind of

what I thought. Blue Dog Democrat. Blue Dog Democrat. You're still using that term? Is there still a blue dog caucus? Two people in it? Yeah, right? Do you think he actually runs for Senate? Yeah. No, really? After I got through the whole interview, at first I was like, because remember, we talked about

this a little off-air and they even, you even touch on it on the interview, well, is this a negotiate employee with ESPN? Because he's got one year left after this one, right? And I was like, well, maybe this is a negotiation tactic. And I was like, well, probably not. But now that you put it out there, now that you said it, you can't really go back, right, like in the way that he did. It's like nobody is going to go, like, you know, people are still going to listen to Feinbaum

and still enjoy his show and his takes on the SEC or whatever. But you can't really go back to the Paul Feinbaum you were last week now, you know? And that's what makes me think that, oh, you're going to have to jump. And that, like, a lot of things are going to work behind the scenes to push him out the door. Well, why can't he go back? Let's say he decides, okay, after much thought and consideration, trying to sound like a politician here. I have decided not to seek the office, despite the, you know, wonderful support and wonderful calls I got. Why can't he just go back to the SEC network into the SEC pregame show on Saturday mornings?

I mean, the thing is, I guess it depends on the kind of company you think ESPN is now. Because they had, I mean, ESPN had kind of drawn a line into sand. I mean, obviously things have changed for the stars of ESPN, right? Like, this is a little bit more leeway, Stephen A. Smith, Pat McAfee, all those guys get a little bit more. leeway now, but this is this is sort of unprecedented. I can't remember another person at ESPN who has flirted with running for office before, right? Yeah, but isn't there a distinction between I'm thinking about leaving ESPN to do this versus I am railing about higher taxes and immigration on Twitter while I work at ESPN? I mean, you, you, when you say that you're,

you voted for Donald Trump and that you could not say, know to him, you are kind of giving us a glance at what your politics are. Sure. Like, you don't have to say it. You don't have to say, oh, you know, I don't have to tweet about immigration because you said, I'm in line with that dude. So I think we can kind of assume, like, what those politics are. And I guess the thing is, is like, does ESPN want us to be dumb?

Does ESPN want to say, well, he didn't say explicitly and he didn't run, so we don't have to, you know, we can all go back to the way it was last week. or we can do what's the reality that's like your guy says I want to be I'm a Republican I believe in Trump and I will run

if Trump wants me to run yeah I would be interested in pursuing that agenda and he doesn't have to say another word about it because we already kind of know where he's at now so I mean I

it's like honestly if he decides not to do this and he goes back and again I have warm feelings toward him for the reasons we outline but if he didn't went back I wouldn't be saying

throw him off the air. I mean, oh, no, me neither. I'd say like, okay, you know, that's, you know, and again, we know a lot more about him. You can't put that, Gene, if you are, as he says, been trying to kind of, you know, skate over politics because you know that that is not great for a sports show and it's not great for a place like ESPN where you're trying to, you have a huge audience. Like, you can't put that genie back in the bottle? But, I mean, can you not host a SEC network show? Well, I couldn't. And to Paul's credit, I mean, he has been extremely. professional about this before. I mean, the fact that everybody kind of had to guess

at his politics says something about how buttoned up he is about this stuff and how he can just sort of allied those conversations. But I just wonder awful if his audience is going to have more expectations of him going forward now as things happened, right? This is the MAGA audience? Yeah, the MAGA audience that he would actually talk about. I mean, so here's the thing about Paul. If you listen to him during COVID, which by the way, I'd really interested in squaring his COVID beliefs against Donald Trump's COVID beliefs, but he was constantly talking about that. He was making fun of Dabo Swinney.

I remember this clip very clearly because Dabo was, you know, I can't remember he was comparing to World War II or something like that. And, you know, Paul's on there making fun of him. If you've been a guest on a show like you ever, I have, he's always trying to take the conversation to an interesting place. Yep. Like whether it's politics with me, Charles tries to get me to talk about ESPN as a company. And I'm like, are we good to do?

I'm happy to answer that question. But we never do that here? He never, it never follows what they say that you're going to talk about. Like Paul is always like throwing a springing a surprise on you. So yeah. And that to me is the best case that he's not actually going to do this. Because Paul is in his heart, a shitter.

I don't know that you can be a shitter. And run in a Republican primary with Donald Trump as president. Man, I don't know. So let me ask you, do you think Tommy Tuber? is a shit stir? Okay, let me, let me specify the kind of shit that's being stirred. Okay, all right. I don't mean, you know, saying things that you or I might find offensive.

I mean being ideologically heterodox, heretical, whatever the word, whatever word you want to use is. Not, I mean, Paul Feinbaum is not the kind of guy who will swear undying loyalty to ESPN, which is giving him piles of money for a decade. Why would he swear undying loyalty to Donald Trump or to the MAGA line? I just don't see that as being something he would be easily capable of doing. Well, I mean, this is what I would say. Obviously, it's a big chance. It's a chance for a big score.

Like if you, I mean, we've all heard the data about people that become senators and how like their wealth grows exponentially, right? It gives you access to a number, an incredible amount of power and influence and gets you in rooms you've never been in before. For sure. And the other piece of it is that, you know, since Trump has come into the public square, I mean, it really started with birtherism, you know, but ever since he came down that escalator, man, I've just been surprised by a lot of people. Like, just, you know, oh, you like that. This is, you know, this is, these are your politics. Okay. That's, you know. And so I'm just, I, although I was surprised by Paul, once you say what it is, I don't think I'm going to, I won't be surprised again. And so to, to, to join that team to be the Republican representative, Alabama, you're going to have to fall in line. Like, he's not going to be able to win talking some censorship. Like, he's going to have to go for broke. It's a loyalty test. Yeah.

I mean, that is, that is what Republican primaries are right now is a loyalty test. Yeah. So there's not going to be any shit stirring. The shit stirring he's going to be doing is, I, nobody knew Tommy Tuberville was like that until he ran for office. I was easier to guess, though, than it was Paul Feinbaum. Fair point. Fair point. I mean, and here's the thing, maybe I am just imagining things about Paul that again, as you say, maybe we, we know now that we were just, we were totally wrong.

And so I'm just imagining this. But to me, he seemed like much more of a provocateur than an ideologue. And so if you're going to hit him with, do you agree with this? Do you agree with this? Do you agree with this? Do you agree with this? Do you agree with this? Is Paul Feinbaum going to be able to it?

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, agree 100 out of 100. Or is he, as a natural provocateur going to be like, actually, I don't? Actually, I don't. Again, am I just imagining things about him that he doesn't, in fact, believe at all? that there's going to be no dissonance there. I don't know. Yeah. That's the guy I feel like I know,

and whether that's just from the radio, and that's just me. I don't know. No, you're right. I mean, the thing is, is that, like, I mean, it is a fairly big tent because, I mean, again, I mean,

it was Donald Trump's administration that came up with the, was Operation Warp Speed, that came up with the vaccine for COVID, right? And so, like, but, and so he wanted to, to take credit for that, but now obviously there's a lot of people within the administration

that are like vaccine denialists or whatever. So I would, I guess the thing is that you have, and we will find out if you goes down this road. All right, where are we on immigration? Where are you on, you know, the Department of Education? Like, where are you on environmental stuff? And we're going to have to find out what it is. And I don't, I think that when we get down to that line, we're just not going to at this point, unless Paul says something different, I don't think I'm going to be surprised anymore. I kind of feel like I got him pegged, which is fine. I'll still go on his show if he wants me to come.

Fair enough. Here's two other reasons he might not run. Politicians love to get attention by saying they might run for something. Paul loves attention with the best of them. Yeah. I used to like it when his ESPN contract was running out and be like, you know, the Big Ten network could be interested in Paul Fine, Bum. I'd be like, like Paul's going to talk about.

Purdue. Like, yeah, like that doesn't sound like, now that's the Paul, I'm pretty sure I know Paul Feinbaum to that extent that he doesn't want to talk about Big Ten football all day. He talked about Charlotte like it was Boston. It's not really the South. It's like, real Charlotte, North Carolina? Okay. So that's number one. And number two is there is a kind of person, and Stephen A. Smith, another great example of this, that wants to run if everything is cleared out for them. Yeah. If everything is set up for them to win. You know, Houston Democratic Party calls, say, hey, Joel Anderson, we love you.

You're a native son. Please come home. A U.S. House members retiring. And we're going to clear this out. We're going to get the fundraising set up. We got it because we think you can make a difference here. That's a very different argument than, hey, come run. And there's going to be 10 other party regulars in this primary who are going to be slugging it out.

And all you could wind up doing is losing your job. Right. That's fair. That's fair. No, I think you're right. But I guess the thing is I would love to know who this person high up in Alabama Republican Party is that has reached out to him. And again, he's got Clay Travis in the bag who has a line to Donald Trump. So I, do you, it makes me think of like, oh, is that why Bruce Pearl decided like rule this out? Because he heard, oh, you're not going to be the guy. If this is what you want to do, you're not going to be the guy. that Bruce would not win a primary against Paul Feinbaum or would not have the support of the, that he wouldn't need that he wouldn't, it wasn't going to be cleared out for him, right? That it was like, oh, yeah, because they don't want to lose in a primary, right? So that would be the absolute worst case. Oh, yeah.

I mean, Nick Christoph proved you can't get your job back. He didn't get it. Not a governor of Oregon, but, you know, I guess I don't know that that would happen every single time. And I do think, see, that's another, that's a version, a different version of the question you asked earlier is, can you go back? like if you actually get into a primary if you actually put all that stuff on the record now you could go back to being Paul Feinbaum king of Southern Radio

can you go back to being ESPN radio I'm not sure well that's see in that kind of the interesting thing Brian because like okay maybe you lose the imprimatur of ESPN but if you're Paul fine bomb you run losing I'm still Paul Finebaum I'll be okay he will be absolutely

whether it's a podcast whether it's another radio show whatever it is you could do politics then too Like he could be incorporated all. Before we move on, we should talk about the Clay Travis of this whole interaction. Yeah, man. I hope you enjoyed watching on YouTube and seeing the ads for Clay's Go Woke, Go Broke, T-shirts. And now, yeah, I saw them at the bottom there.

I was like, oh, man, I wonder if I should get one of those. So this exchange came up. 2019, Feinbaum had a chance to interview President Donald Trump before the big LSU Alabama game that. year. Here's what happened. I called my boss and they killed it. What's the reaction when you think you're going to get to interview the president and they say, nope, not happening? I was devastated. They told me that we are not allowed to mix politics with sports. What do you think they would have said if it were Barack Obama and you had the

opportunity to interview him? I think the answer is pretty evident that Andy Katz went to the White House every year for the bracket. It was a turning point for me. I really, it wasn't about politics at all. Yeah. It was just about the idea of going to the White House to interview the president of United States. And it wasn't about politics.

Yeah. It was about the game that he was going to attend. The biggest game of the year in college football. We can imagine how excited Clay Travis was when he heard that or at least heard it on the record. Oh, a continuation of his, you know. you know, a decade plus long, you know, campaign against ESPN. Yeah, I know.

Well, ESPN is a covenant of liberals specifically. MS ESPN, right? Like, that's the, is that the line? Yeah, MS ESPN. So, yeah, man. I mean, his eyes lit up. And he kept taking little shots at ESPN like that throughout, right, about how liberal ESPN and all this other stuff.

So can I add a few data points to that event that happened in, 2019. Yeah. Year before, 2018, Jamel Hill announced she was leaving ESPN. Now, was Jamel leaving ESPN because it was too liberal? Was she leaving ESPN because it was not accommodating her political beliefs to the extent that she wanted ESPN to?

Right. The year after that incident with Donald Trump, Dan Lebitard announced he was leaving ESPN late in 2020. Did Dan Lebitard leave ESPN because it was too liberal? Yeah. He couldn't possibly stomach the idea of working one more day at such a liberal company. Or did he leave for the opposite reason? Because he had things he wanted to say that could no longer be accommodated on ESPN's air.

I mean, that's the thing. I mean, I think people, so you can have a critique of John Skipper's ESPN, right? And the opportunities and the programming that he enabled during his, run there, right? And that there was a lot more diversity, a lot more left-leaning opinions and emerging of politics and sports and so on and so forth. But that ain't this ESPN, and it hasn't been for a long time. It's not Jimmy Petaro's ESPN. Yeah, man. That's just not, I mean, it just doesn't go that way anymore. And I just, you know, the thing is, it's like, this is a part of a playbook that is going on all around the country. Right now, my alma mater is,

in the crosshairs of the right wing for not being right wing enough. TCU, one of the most conservative universities in the country. And so, look, man, the thing about Clay Travis and ESPN is kind of saying, they'll just never be happy. Like, it'll never be, it'll never be right enough for them, right? It'll always be a little too liberal for them. That's what I was thinking, because I'm like, here's a guy who is wondering whether he should go run in the Republican primary in Alabama.

He has told his boss, the number two executive at ESP and Burke Magnus, this. And according to Feinbaum in this interview, Magnus was like, we support you. Think about it. Make your decision. Yeah. Like, his job prospects were not harmed at all. No. By coming out and saying this.

Right. Just imagine this, Joel. If Scott Van Pelt were toying with leaving SportsCenter to run for Senator from Maryland and replace Chris Van Hollen to be a Democrat, Clay Trouper. Travis would be citing that as evidence that ESPN was too liberal. He'd been yelling from the rooftops. Oh, my God. He's like, just like we always suspected.

Yeah. Absolutely. It's like, what? Okay. Yeah. That doesn't count if it goes the other way. His confirmation bias was just, it was just rolling throughout there. But I get, you know, I mean, the thing is, too, I was like, this is, I mean, we don't

have to get into the differences, but Barack Obama doing the NCAA tournament bracket in 2011 is totally different than Donald Trump. Because there's no interview that you can do with Donald Trump that you can guarantee that it's going to go the way that you want and that it's going to be non-political. That just doesn't exist with him. Like you can't make that guarantee. So if ESPN is holding the line on that, they're saying, hey, look, it's not going to be political. Oh, you can vouch for, you can assure us that Donald Trump is not going to say anything in the interview will go left.

Oh, sure. Great. one more topic for you before we get to J-School. Kamala Harris's book. Yeah, man. 107 days. You and I confidently said last week on the show that we were not going to read 107 days. Yeah.

Well, it turns out that other people had a different idea. The first week, the book sold 350,000 copies. The publisher, Simon & Schuster, says the only memoirs that have had a better first week of sales since 2023 were Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and Prince Harry Quite a collection of talent To be a part of Simon also says these sales Put 107 days on a trajectory

To be the best selling memoir published in 2025 Take that Graydon Carter and Keith McNally What do you think accounts for these Bafo sales? So I think So I'm probably going to be wrong about this But my theory is that that people were expecting a lot more revelations of what was going on behind the scenes and for like a really fiery and thorough critique of the Democratic Party and also like her opponent, right? That they sit that she's like, oh, she's untethered now. Like she's going to really be able to go after them.

But also I was like, man, readers are a lot more intelligent now. They can read clips. They can watch interviews. so usually they don't, you know, so I don't know. I mean, Kamala Harris is a very popular person contrary to popular opinion, right? Like, she still got a hell of a lot of votes. A popular person contrary to popular opinion. I like that.

Yeah, right. Like, I mean, she still got a hell of a lot of votes, dude. You know, like a lot of people voted for her. And a lot of people have, like, this intrigue about what went on behind the scenes. And they're hoping to get it answered there. What do you think, then? Can we add a critique of Joe Biden to your? list of things people were hoping critiqued or people were hoping critiqued in the book?

Absolutely. By the way, Kamala Harris won 75 million votes in the presidential election just to underline your point. I mean, yeah, man, 300. Just think of all of them people voted for her, 350,000 copies in the whole scheme of things. It's just, I mean, that's great, obviously, for go out and buy a book. But there's a huge pool of people out there to pull from, if you're her.

You raise an interesting question about the media world we live in where there's just clips and interviews, the Maddow interview. out there if you just have internet service, you don't even have to have MSNBC, you can just watch and read and do all kinds of things for free. Yeah. And I'm always fascinated about that

because I think for people like you and me, we see all that and hear all that, we're like, I don't need to read the book. I already read it. Yeah. But I think it actually works the other way on a lot of other people. Oh, yeah.

They get a taste of it. They see an interview like, now I've got to go buy this book and find out the rest of the story. Yeah. Didn't that happen with you? I mean, the Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson book about Biden. Like, it actually worked that way for me, right?

Well, I was like, I need to make some time for this book. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, because that was sold within an inch of life. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was everywhere. And I was like, you're nice. I got to dig in here.

I didn't feel the same way about Kamala, but because I'd heard enough and seen enough interviews, I'm like, oh, she didn't really go there. So I just, if she's not going to go, and be as totally transparent as she can be, then I'm just not as interested in it. The theory I'd add to your theory is that there's just this blob of people out there, and I said blob in the nicest possible way.

We used to call this blob the resistance. I think we tried out resistance 2.0 and kind of rejected the term because it was weird. Didn't work. But whoever these people are, they just want to do something. They feel powerless. You know, they've already listened to Ezra. podcast and they just want to they want to register their discontent and their anger in a way and buying Kamala's book is one way to do that well i'm going to add onto this from something so you

you and uh dave talked about the bernie sanders biographies right um and about you know like jeff stine it washington post is coming out with one and there's already one by dan shishin is that right chayison yeah chyison chyison coming out in February. Dan Chiasen, Bernie from Burlington. And I think that you talked about how Bernie is in it, the proper biographs. I wonder if people are reading these books and buying them in hopes. Like, this is a really dark time if you're a left or a liberal, right?

And it kind of gives you a glimpse into a world that would have been possible. And maybe there's still as possible. And so people are reading this stuff and are just like, well, maybe it kind of gives you hope. And maybe it might try to pump you up a little bit for, you know, the years, the elections to come. It's like the counterfactual, the what if. Yeah. Yeah. What if that happened instead of this had happened.

Yeah, no, I think there's a little bit of that too. I was thinking about the resistance or whatever we're calling it when I read the first interview from the Washington Post opinions editor Adam O'Neill. Yeah, man. He gave the interview to Fox News. interesting telling but he had a quote in there he said if there are people who had a perception that subscribing to the post was like a form of activism and that they had to do it to oppose a particular politician or party now that we're opening up our lands and writing more widely in a

nonpartisan way i don't know maybe you'll lose people that way but i think the upside of where the growth is is by appealing to many more americans and rebuilding that trust to me that's a pretty clear decision. Brother, you are going to fail. It's not going to work. You're not going to fool. The people you want, they've already get that dope from somebody else, man.

You're not just going to move on to this corner and start selling dope on that corner. The dope dealer is already, they've found their dope dealers, brother. It's not going to work for you. In it ironic, you're talking to Fox News, which has done more probably than any institution to convince people not to trust what they read in newspapers to say, please subscribe to the newspaper.

This is now for you? Yeah. I mean, I just, right. I mean, also this guy, and, you know, I don't know Adam O'Neill. He might be a lovely, intelligent person. He's 33 years old, very young. I remember being 33. It was a long time ago for me.

This strategy, our readers are overwhelmingly liberal, right? Well, so what I'm going to do is. construct a strategy to alienate them, our massive readership, in hopes of chasing some other readership that has never actually materialized in pretty much any mainstream publication that I can remember? Like, I don't, like, I don't, who successfully made the right turn and, and pulled it off? Like, Newsweek has tried it. I mean, there've been a couple others.

CBS News is going to try it. CBS News is going to try it. But I'm just like this. I mean, maybe you have to. to feel this way because, you know, Jeff Bezos has said, this is what it's going to be. Jeff Bezos and Will Lewis have said, this is what it's going to be. So maybe you just out, you adjust the coach.

You got to, they gave you the players and you got to run this offense. But I'm sorry, brother. That just sounds dumb. It sounds dumb to me. It does. And like, you just think about like newspaper, newspaper economics, how hard it is to get to people to read anything, much less subscribe and pay for stuff.

Mm-hmm. The newspapers were hands. handed this gift, which is the resistance was like, we will subscribe to you because we're mad about politics. And that didn't mean you have to kowtow to the resistance and make your editorial page dumb and, you know, just silly clickbaity Trump is bad man stuff all the time or whatever it is. But that's a gift, right?

And if you chase those people off and tell them this isn't for you, what do you do? What's your other plan? Like, again, like, they bailed out newspapers in the second half of the last decade. Like, that was, it was a stimulus plan to keep them alive. And then you're like, oh, actually, we're just going to chase all those people out because we've got another plan. I mean, bro, you got Megan McArdle already, dog. You know what I mean? You've got your people, man.

Thea said, I mean, you've got the people. I mean, I just, that's right. That's the thing is they were there under the old regime. Yeah. The liberal equivalent won't be there under the new regime, which is very, very funny to me. By the, Dylan Byers made a good point about this in Puck, too. He's like, the memo you speak of from Bezos about personal liberties and free markets. That came out on February 26th.

We're now seven months down the line. And it's like, it's just like the Will Lewis plan to reinvent the post. Is this actually going to happen, guys? Are we just kicking this can down the road? No, newspapers come out every day, you realize, right? not come out every seven months. Like how long is it going to freaking take? And it was like a three-pronged plan, like three different newsrooms or something like that.

Oh my goodness, which part of which has been scrapped already. But this is like the slowest moving reinvention that was sold at the beginning. Like people aren't reading your stuff. This is losing money. We must apply the shock paddles to the newspaper right now. And then it just let's just take our sweet time to do it. I mean, yeah, man. I just, it's really sad.

And I should, I should note that, uh, NABJ actually released us. They did a statement about, you know, after Karen Adia had been forced out there not too long ago, about, you know, just sort of the declining representation of black folks at that newspaper. They don't have a full-time black staffer on that opinion staff in a city that, you know, used to be known as Chocolate City. Probably didn't quite have had those kind of numbers anymore to meet that standard. But here's the quote here from,

Mr. O'Neill. I don't think the opinion section is ever going to be in a place where we have quotas and we're getting people just to get people because they have some immutable characteristic. So I'll never hire someone because of their race or gender or anything like that. I mean, you're already saying that you're hiring people because they got to believe a certain sort of thing. Like, I mean, you're saying, so your your version of affirmative action is, like, the people that come here have to believe in free markets in the liberties or whatever, right and I'm just like I mean you kind of already having a quota you're telling us right now like this is what we're going to be doing you're just choosing which quota you don't want to meet which is fine that's okay like I mean this is this is not I don't own the Washington Post and neither does in ABJ but if people respond accordingly you guys just have to be willing to deal with it so we got a note when we talked about Eddie the last time that we had forgotten about Colbert King oh yeah Colbert King though Colbert King is retiring or was retiring in September ending a 30-plus-year run at the Washington Post.

So no, we will not leave out Colbert King for future discussions of the post-opinion section. All right, it is time for a feature that always moves with the speed of lightning with the speed of a young Joel Anderson who here, ladies and gentlemen, J-School. Man, you know, I was funny because I've become aware

of the I-show speed guy, Brian. Yes. And you know who that is? Yeah, I do, but weirdly and reluctantly but yes, I do. He ran a 4-4-940, which is really, really good. That's fast. That's fast.

I just thought his bit was that he was faster than that. You know, I'm not trying to pump my shit up, but do you know who else is run a 4-49, Brian? Joel Anderson. Joel Anderson, 1995, Nike Combine at the University of Houston. Check it out. But anyway, that was pretty fast once in time. I was sick that day, I would have.

Yeah, well, you should have came out, man. I've posted a 4-3. That's right. Pascal, man. Faskel. But so I just kind of wanted to follow up because I thought Dave made an interesting point about barbecue at Fort Worth because you talked about your barbecue excursion. You sent me a picture.

Look amazing. The story behind the bar barbecue. I mean, I can't wait to get down there and try that. Looks fantastic. But I will say, Dave is right, man. I don't remember barbecue being quite as big a deal in the cities when I was coming up. Like it wasn't it all and it wasn't it wasn't nearly as good and we just no I always think about barbecue when we were kids like I thought about pizza buffets there was a lot of it

yeah yeah you went inexpensive and there was a lot of it absolutely or you'd go to some raggedy little smokehouse in central Texas or whatever and you would get the meat but like it was not something that has become like basically I mean it's not I don't know if gourmet is the appropriate a time, but it's a very elevated form of food now, and you can find it in every city. And I remember when people would go to Houston and they would visit and they would ask me, like, well, man, what's the best barbecue restaurant in town? And I said, man, we don't really have that many great barbecue restaurants. I'd be like, let's go to good company right off of 59 or whatever. Or in Fort Worth, when I live there, man, I don't think I ever went to railhead. The two places

I went, Riskeys and downtown. Had you been to Riskeys? Indeed. They had all you can eat ribs for a while. That was a thing. Yeah, man. And they were one of the few places that had beef ribs, and I eat beef ribs. They're really good. Yeah, man. And Cousins Barbecue on Bryant Irvin, which I think probably if you talked to, I mean, no offense to their cousins.

Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it's just, you know, people probably. I may not be a sponsor of Texas Corner here at the press box in the future. No, probably not. No, no, no. I mean, I'm a lovely barbecue, but not quite what people were excited about. So, yeah, I'm trying to remember, like, when, I wonder if Texas Monthly did a lot to make barbecue this big, you know, by having a barbecue reviewer and all that, you know. That was a big deal. And also, I think Franklin just opening in Austin, I think. And it was, that was right as the foodie movement. Right. And that form of the foodie movement that was not just interested in conventional five-star restaurants, but was interested in that, the best version of that kind of food was coming to the four. I feel like that helps really create

I'm using the word movement here in the sense but that creates the barbecue movement as we know it or the modern barbecue movement. There's so many more places to go. When I go home to Houston now, it is a big deal to go get barbecue and it just, like there wasn't even, Rudy's wasn't even a big deal in Texas at the time. Like it was just kind of a few assorted places.

Like there was one off of 35 outside of Waco that I could go to every nine again. But yeah, so I, so when you, at you, you quiz day, if you're like, what's wrong with you, man? Why didn't she, you know, eat a lot of barbecue? Because it just, it just wasn't a thing. You kind of had to go out of town or it just, it just wasn't a food that people were so excited about.

But that's still not an excuse for David. I mean, we were eating all kinds of crap in Fort Worth. It's not like we were, you know, going for, you know, French food every night. Well, people could have said the very same to the next point about you and Cracker Barrow. Well, I told you I wasn't putting on airs. Yeah. I just never got to it. I don't know why.

Then. So I. It didn't sound like you were that excited about the meal you had. It was okay. Man, Mama's pancake of French toast breakfast, man. That's what you should have went with because you get the sausage. Why didn't you tell me this? Man, you said, don't for breakfast.

You didn't even specify. The hash brown casserole. I mean, I don't know. Are you a sweets person? Do you like sweets and fruit? Yeah, I like a sweet breakfast. Oh, man, they put a little like peach compote over the pancake or the or cherries. whatever over the pancake or the French toast and it is delicious. You've got to go back

and do it right the next time or go on up to, you know, what is it, Ventura County? There we go right. One of our listeners told us about that it was one up there. So you got to go up there and do it right this time. Don't get the chicken fried steak and eggs. Here's what I liked is that the silverware came in that little paper package. Oh, it was set on your place. Yeah. It had been kind of pre-packaged. That was kind of fun. Also that the syrup for the pancakes came in something that was the size of an airplane liquor bottle. Oh, yeah. I love those little syrups.

Yeah, man. And as I was telling David, I wanted to order Uncle Herschel's breakfast, but I couldn't decide whether I was supposed to side with Uncle Herschel. These are the complicated political times we live in. I was like, was he the good guy or the bad guy of the whole Cracker Barrel affair? We know a little bit too much about Cracker Barrel now. I mean, the thing is, what we knew about Cracker Barrel when I was going was in great. in the first place, like it had kind of a history that people were like, man, you might not want to go there.

But that's how good the mama's French toast and mama's pancake breakfast are. So you know what? If you want to hold off on it and wait until I come out there for come to L.A. in a couple weeks and we make a trip up to Ventura, then maybe we should do that then. Let's, I'm, I'm ready for it. I did, I did enjoy the gift shop where they all, they had a Christmas tree up already. And they had like the climbing Santa that was like a Santa doll that climbed a ladder. and then climb down the ladder. I took a video of that.

I'll post that on Blue Sky for everyone wants to see that. Please do. And man, the candies, man, they got them these nice little, you know, they used to call them the whorehound candies. My mom would bring those home from there. That stuff was good, man. So I'm delighted every time. Did you sit in one of the rocking chairs?

I didn't, but I did see the rocking chairs. And I saw they were for sale, which is kind of fun too. You can sit in it and then buy it. That's a mark of a good restaurant to me. I've always been trying to, I've been thinking for maybe the last 50s. 15 years. Should I buy one of these chairs? I don't know. I'm still kind of the... Well, Yola Boko Floats's coming up, and I don't want to spoil anything.

Oh, okay. All right. Well, look, we can talk about it. I want you to have a book in a place to read the book in. I appreciate it. He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. But thanks a magic by Kyle Crichton. Coming up on the press box, David Shoemaker returns Monday. And this man, this legend, Joel Anderson, returns Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the media. Talk to you that, Joel. Can't wait, man.