The Press Box - The Gaslighting of America, Biden’s Veep, and Coronavirus Media Layoffs | The Press Box

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Donald Trump’s gaslighting of America (01:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (16:30), Joe Biden choosing a running mate (21:45), some coronavirus media layoffs (39:15), and listener mail (46:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. We hope The Ringer can provide you entertainment and companionship during this time. So as always, feel free to check out The Ringer.com, where we're still covering the latest in sports, pop culture, tech, and media. And the Ringer's YouTube channel can provide endless amounts of entertainment. You can find that at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shumaker of The Ringer here. This is the press box. We got lots and lots to get to today.

if Joe Biden is pretty much a lock to become the Democratic nominee, we're going to talk about who he will choose as his running mate. Plus, we've already seen several media jobs lost this week, thanks to coronavirus, who are the media victims, and what will the world look like without them? We'll answer some listener mail plus anoint the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, I want to start with a topic we can call the gaslighting of America. That word is probably overused these days.

But gaslighting is precisely the right word for what has been happening with President Trump and coronavirus over the last week. Here's Donald Trump talking about coronavirus on January 22nd when asked if he was worried about a pandemic. No, not at all. We have it totally under control. Here's Trump on February 27th. It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle. It will disappear. on March 7th, less than two weeks ago, Trump said, I'm not concerned at all. Now listen to Donald Trump on Tuesday. Some people did note that your tone seemed more somber yesterday.

You talked about that August timeline. Did you see a projection? Some people thought perhaps that two million potentially that could die, maybe prompted part of that. Was there a shift in tone? I didn't think, I mean, I have seen that where people actually liked it. But I didn't feel different. I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic.

I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do is look at other countries. I think now it's in almost 120 countries all over the world. No, I've always viewed it as very serious. There was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar, but some people said it wasn't. If he always knew this was a pandemic, if he always knew it was seriously, then he was gaslighting us in the reverse direction, I guess.

I mean, that he was just completely lying to us for the, I guess, with the intention of, you know, keeping a happy face on. But clearly what he was saying at the beginning of this thing was that it was fine, everything was going to be fine, and nothing bad was even happening. And more than anything else, I think it was that, you know, all the fears were being overblown by the crazy liberal media. Oh, yeah, that was laced in there, too. I, when I, when I hear turnabouts like that from it's going to disappear to, I always knew this was a pandemic, I was always taking it seriously.

I just, don't you always wonder like, will and how will history capture this? Like, will it do justice to the fact that the president of the United States one month, one week before, this descended on America to the level it has the last couple of days was saying this was not a big deal that it was all under control. I mean, you know,

will we years and decades from now understand just how craven that was? I can't help but think, and we talked about this some earlier in the week, I can't help get away from this idea that Donald Trump, love him or hate him, gets handed these, gets so many alli-ups.

Like there are so many dunks that he is just being served up for. And he is too, so preoccupied with, well, I guess conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories is one way to put it. But, I mean, at the beginning of his presidency, he was so preoccupied, apparently, with his hatred for Barack Obama, that he was just blindered to the things he could actually do

to, like, secure his place in history. I mean, if he had been a C plus president, if he had been anything resembling a Uniter, history would have looked at him in such a different way than they're going to look at him now. And this is just another example where, like, all you had to do was let the apparatus do its job. All you had to do is go out there and say,

this is serious, everybody wash your hands, and let the rest of the government do its regular work and not get in its way and not lie to everybody. And you would have been seen as a full, is a completely fine and probably positively seen president. And he just, because of his belief

that the, whatever, that the liberal establishment was out to get him, that this was a, you know, some sort of like backdoor impeachment attempt or whatever else, or that the evil germs were trying to finally get him once and for all. For some reason,

he was just completely incapable of doing the thing that, would have just been so, the easiest way forward would have, would have led history to view him positively. That's what's so wild about this. That's totally right. And as wretched as his presidency has been, there is still this portion of the media that wants him to shape up, right? And we'll reward him. When he, remember when he had that like just semi serious press conference on Monday, which he was being asked about there where he was just tonally slightly different and actually taking coronavirus. virus seriously. There was there were people on TV going, yeah, look at this. You got to hand it to the president. Got to hand it to the president. I don't know if he just doesn't understand those incentives, which as you say are basically the alleyup dunk being thrown up. There are, there's nobody defending, dude. It's all you. Or if he's just so small minded, you know, with things about like, I don't want to hurt the economy because that's how I'm

getting reelected. I don't want to hurt the economy because, man, my friends and I are going to make money off a good stock market. I don't know which it is. You know, and of course, you and I are throwing like actual just basic morality out the window, you know, like protect the American population. We're not even, we're not even putting that on Trump's radar. We're just saying, like, here are two things Trump understands. Good press make money, right? How he doesn't see his way through those two things, I just don't know. I really don't. Well, unfortunately, it's not just him. I mean, I think that there's, you know, you see even with his voters, there are people who are like, well, you know, Trump's Trump, but like, you know, there's there are positives in this too or whatever.

They're always willing to look past it. But unfortunately, as, you know, we discussed last time as well, I mean, this is the entire apparatus of Fox News that is out there trying to gaslight us, trying to convince us that they've been serious about this problem all along. And it's just not the case. Washington posted an amazing side-by-side video with what those Fox News hosts were saying in February and early March versus what they were saying over the last week and change. Let's just listen to a little bit of the before we took the pandemic seriously and after we took the pandemic seriously side by side. All the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly doesn't reflect reality without a vaccine.

the flu would be far more deadly. We are facing an incredibly contagious and dangerous virus that is moving across the world from one hotspot to another. We're going to call out anyone and everyone who's using this virus as a political weapon against the president.

The standard flu every single year kills tens of thousands of Americans. We are now entering what will be the crucial defining 15-day period as it relates to this virus where we must slow the spread of coronavirus. It's actually the safest time to fly. Everyone I know that's flying right now, terminals are pretty much dead. We have a responsibility to slow down this virus and to think of other people during this time.

And so if you can keep your distance and prevent someone from getting close to you that might be sick, you could save your family, you can save the elderly, and help our country as a nation. That was Janine Piro, Sean Hannity, and a Fox personality whose identity we have not been able to determine yet. our crack staff could not figure out my first my first takeaway from that was that it was sort of surprising how they weren't able to get them in like 100% bull's-eye damning parallel phrasing and and I think more than anything what that's left me with is how carefully

they obfuscate the truth on a daily basis right like they like they like it seemed like everyone on that video in the first half was taking pains not to say the thing that could absolutely just toss them out the door but like they were still like implying everything in that direction but overall

that was just an incredible reel of I mean everybody knows that there are marching orders probably at every network but like they come down from the top but Fox News I think is more notorious for it than anyone else and and justifiably so and man I mean

this isn't the first time we've seen this sort of gaslighting from Sean Hannity trying to insist that he was on one team before, you know, for a long time when he wasn't. But this is a different place. This is not the time and place for this sort of traditional politicized playbook. This is a international pandemic.

And these guys are shouting about Democrats playing politics with it when like the only, like they are the actual ones playing politics with it. It's just so, it's so morally reprehensible, it beggars believe. It's politicized, it's fealty to Trump.

I also want to believe there's some sort of what they see as a market incentive in there to go the way they did at the beginning, that there's just this portion of the population that wanted to be told that this was just the flu. You know,

there was, when we see these people all the time, we are probably related to some of these people, as we like to say this, the portion of the population, again, to say like, eh, you know, I don't want, I don't want to be told not to go to a bar. I don't want to be told what to do. This is stupid. This is an overreaction. I saw this with SARS and the swine

flound. And I just, I just is not, I want to, I want somebody to tell me every day that this is not a big deal. Yeah. Now, if you think of it in those market terms, again, we're throwing human morality out here, folks. This is just a thought experiment. Most journalists, most journalists come in and say, I want to tell the truth. I want to, I want that my readers or viewers to be better informed. This is obviously not the case here. If you throw human morality out the window,

there is a point at which the pandemic becomes so serious that your calculation as an amoral TV news person becomes that then you do have to switch, right? Because then people are going to get really mad at you. If you were the, if you're still telling them, I just go to your bar. I mean, I guess one question I have here is, is a, does a Fox News viewer notice this?

I mean, let's, let's imagine and let's, let's not be disparaging. It's like somebody watches Sean Hannity a lot. Did they notice the turn on a dime? And if so, how do they explain that? No, I mean, because I don't think the average Sean Hannity viewer or Fox News viewer in general, and I don't mean this is an insult. I don't think their average viewer is checking Twitter for the side by sides. You know, I think that generally it's like,

if someone in your family or one of your friends was like, I've been saying this thing was a real problem for a long time, then you would probably just be, I mean, what do you do in that moment? You say like, okay, and you move forward in the conversation.

And maybe you're like, rejigger your memory for that to be the case, or, you know, maybe you remember it and just like roll your eyes and let it go. But I'm not sure that, that I'm not sure that anybody, and feel free to take this part that I'm about to say as an insult to any

Fox viewers out there. I'm not sure that, I'm not sure that, the truth or consistency matters particularly to them, right? I mean, like the same, in the same way that you, like you just said, if anybody, if someone is watching this and is reassured by this bullshit, if someone is, if there is a market open for people who are like looking to be consoled into thinking that everything's going to be fine, because like everyone's, everyone always lies to you.

I think those same people are happy to be, they're happy to have like the story just, you know, twist it on them because like they don't need the consistency. They don't need reality. They just need to be told the new thing that they're being told, and they just are like, you know, cheering along with the team. Yeah. I think that's probably right. I think there's a little bit of a, these are my guys and gals,

and I'm going to roll with them no matter what. I think my favorite part of that clip was just the tonal difference between the before and after. Yes. I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh, but there's just a pain to look on their faces as they were like describing the seriousness of it.

Yeah. Because the first one, they were in full cable news mode. Like, people saying this is different than the flu. This is just a flu. That kind of mock, you know, eternal outrage. And the second one, the coronavirus is spreading across America. I mean, completely downbeat. Is there anything that's further?

I mean, I don't mean to make too much light of this. But like, having to be that level of like grave and earnest on the broadcast must be the most difficult thing in the world for Hannity and Piro and people like that. And just because, just because the sort of performers are used to being, I'm not talking, I'm not like questioning their morality. I think Sean Hannity is probably like, you know, I mean, he's clearly a deeply religious fellow that has some moral code or whatever. But like, that is not, I mean, that, that would be like, like, you and I like tell jokes on this podcast, but this would be like asking one of us to give up, get up at like a televised like celebrity roast and do a bit,

you know, like it's like, it would be, it is so hard for them to affect that level of seriousness on television that is almost as painful to watch for us as it is for them. And that's why when I say how will history capture this moment, which is a question I just think about all the time since we're living in it. But and go, I always think of those Rick Pearlstein volumes about conservatism. Oh, yeah. Which are so cool because not only they're so interesting, they just capture the kind of fine grain, you know, stuff that ran in newspaper, signs that were held up at events.

it almost is going to take somebody like him for you to appreciate just what those performances at one in the White House briefing room and two on cable news are like. Because I mean, that rest of that Trump deal from Tuesday was Trump going, you know, the only thing I've done wrong is get bad press. I mean, just we will, I'm worried we will lose the awfulness and insanity of that somehow in this story when we think about it, that you can really. Because Trump talks so much, Sean Hannity and those guys eat so many innings that you'll just lose a little of the texture of just how insane that is. Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, yes, you're absolutely right. I mean, all I can say to that is like Gabe Sherman, all eyes on you. I mean, like, I feel like there's, like, we see that the, we see the people who are paying attention to this on a grander level on Twitter.

And I'm, I can only hope that in this time of incredible isolation for, like, like, we see that. Like there's some of us that have absolutely like so much less time on our hands than we would have if we were living our normal life. And there's some people that have an infinite infinitely more amount of time on their hands. And I sure hope that they're cataloging this for posterity and for history because this is, these are incredible times on just about every level. Here's a voice you can always trust the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press. box pod where they are always gratefully received. David, among these celebrities stricken with coronavirus, was Idris Elba.

Twitter had a lot of fun with the New York post tweet that IDed him as Cats actor. Idris Elba. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. If we didn't want Idris to get sick, why has everyone been saying we should cough into our elba? Thanks to Jeff Kaufman. I did a little extra pause there just to let that sink in. David,

according to the London Independent, Bono has written a coronavirus ballad. So, oh my God. Bono brought us back after September 11th. Now he's going to bring us back, I guess, during and then after the coronavirus. It was an overwork. Twitter joke to write,

coronavirus spreads exactly like YouTube's Songs of Innocence. You don't want it, but one day the symptoms just appear on your iPhone. Can I have a quick aside? Can I take a moment here? Sure. Thanks to Bill Scheichen, by the way. All of these bands that came of age in the 80s that are still with us. The 80s were, I don't mean to make light of the issues that were the serious issues that plagued us in the 80s.

We're saying that a lot today, by the way, but go ahead. Prior to, basically everything prior to AIDS becoming a thing. Like our entire celebrity culture was just like this giant apparatus. us in search of a cause. Bands like you too were like performing at live aid because like, or like you farm aid,

you know, like every, every serious song on the radio was about like the homeless guy who was panhandling on the corner. All of these acts just like desperately wanted Vietnam. Like they wanted something to write a song about. And Bono has been on that search his entire career.

I don't know if coronavirus is going to be that thing for him. I don't know if we're going to look back. Be listening to oldies radio in 30 years saying how like great Bono's, Bono's metaphors about this terrible time in our history, or, you know, were, but I hope he finds his thing, man. I hope he finds his calling. There are certain people that are just most comfortable in that mode, you know. Yeah.

They want to be, they want to be the one headlining the concert that brought everybody back from fill in the blank. Yeah. You know, from the flood, from the attack, from the virus in this case. Anyway, thanks to Bill Scheichen. And finally, David, one of the many cultural officials, of the pandemic is you keep seeing the delay of all these movies and TV shows in the future. We got one headline here.

The Friends Reunion Special at HBO Max has been delayed due to coronavirus concerns. It was an upward Twitter joke to write, I guess it just wasn't their day, their week, their month, or even their year. Thanks to Mikey T. by the way, if I may not do an aside, I don't know that we need to hear about every one of these as kind of a stand alone. Because I feel like it was, remember when last week when we was like, okay, guys, we have an announcement, the University of Michigan's pro day has been canceled.

Where the draft prospects go. And then like 20 minutes, I was like, guys, we have another announcement, Clemson's pro day has been canceled. And I wanted to say like, you know, if there are any pro days still going on, just report that at this point. Like everything is canceled.

And this is the same way. I saw like Peter Rabbit 2 or some movie got moved back. Like, okay, you know, just everything has moved back. Is this, but is this that everybody is,

is this that everybody is a GM now for sports that is now in the, in the entertainment field where like we actually care about recording like filming, filming times and release dates more than the actual content? Yes, because all of those are presented to us as discrete content moments, right? Right. Filming has begun.

Here's a, oh, here's a picture from the set. Oh, this casual photo that just happened to appear on the HBO Max Twitter account. And then here's the first trailer. And then here's the first teaser or whatever.

You know, it just all those things are content. And so when you lose them, I think you're right. Then somebody, we have a reporting apparatus that is essentially saying, okay, this is now a news story that they're not even filming.

Like we wouldn't even know friends was filming. 20 years ago unless you're reading like variety or something like that. Well, we just appear from the ether and you'd be like, thank God, for all you knew, it was filmed the week before. Like, you didn't have any concept of time and this sort of thing. And by the way, I just want to say a brief thank you. I thought that that aside was going to lead directly into a story from our high school years

about me being the first person to own like the Rembrandt's album so that you could have the we could have the friend's theme song to play at like our houses. But we can move on. That's fine. You and I would have an off-air conversation about that before I would reveal. Such a thing on this podcast. In The Notebook, David, I want to talk to you about Joe Biden's Veep. I think we could be a little presumptuous because Joe Biden won three more primaries Tuesday in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois, all of which were held under the shadow of coronavirus.

Nate Silver's delegate estimates as of Wednesday were Biden, 1,237, Sanders 937, meaning he says Sanders needs to win the remaining primaries by about 12. 25 points in order to catch up. So when it comes to what the Biden campaign calls its vigorous vetting process for his running made, I actually think this is a pretty short list. In fact, I think it's a very, very, very short list. Biden said at Sunday's debate that it would be a woman. Given the state of the world, I don't know about you, but I'd be shocked if it is not Kamala Harris Amy Klobuchar or Elizabeth Warren.

And outside of that list, I just can't imagine who it would be. What do you think? Well, first of all, I want to say it's sort of amazing that we, a couple of weeks ago, talked about whether or not we were going to do an emergency podcast or when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. And the end of the race for him came with so much more of a whimper than a bang that we're like already on to talking about the next thing. There's a lot to discuss in terms of the end of the end of the race.

the Bernie Sanders campaign and we will. Don't get me wrong. But that we're like already on to this next thing is it just says I think a lot about where we are and the speed of media. And also, I mean, obviously there's a lot of other stuff going on in the world. But to answer your question, I don't know. I mean, way back in those wild days when Joe Biden was just sending out signals about possibly getting into the race, when it seemed like a totally misbegotten quest, and this was even before he got in and it seemed like a fully misbegotten quest. And we were just hearing all of these weird, weird media leaks that led us to believe he was probably getting in.

And everything in that time turned out to sort of be true. The one thing, the one thing that I remember hearing is that he had reached out directly to Stacey Abrams about being his running mate. So I don't think it was floated in some way, yes. But that was, and maybe that was just floating it. I think that it's, I mean, that would be a little. bit of, that might be a little bit problematic. I just think that anybody at this stage, especially going up again, you know, this sort of must win field of the election, you want someone who's

like a little bit more thoroughly vetted than that, although I'm not saying anything negative about, about, uh, Stacey Abrams. I just think, you know, the other people you mentioned are, have been through the, the ringer already. Um, I, that said, though, I find it hard to imagine, I think that that despite the appeal of Kamala Harris well let me take Kamala Harris in particular

I think she has a lot of assets I think that that the Democratic primary for the relatively brief time she was in it had the effect of if nothing else reducing her to a sort of Tim Kaney figure and I don't know that that is that is certainly not what Joe Biden would be

or should be looking for in a running mate. Right? I mean, just her time on the national stage, I think, like, actually diminished her specter. And of everybody on this list, she makes the most sense on paper. I'm not sure if there's enough oomph there for that to actually be the choice,

but as we've seen in the past, that might not be the decider. I think Elizabeth Warren would be a really great, like, you know, like pull back the curtain surprise sort of especially after, you know, especially after going head to head with Bernie Sanders for a short amount of time, but, you know, that being, that being the, you know, his primary opponent.

You know, Klobuchar is, you know, has always been more Tim Kainy than Kamala Harris could ever dream of being. And so you can actually see that path, but I think that would be a sort of, whoopee cushion sound effect of a selection. but when he when he decided when he announced that he was going to have a woman and I think that was I mean I think that it was one of those weird statements that like like you like certainly that is

I mean that is actually Bernie Sanders response to that question I think was was was the perfect one where he was like that will almost certainly be the case like we all know what we're you know we all know what's going to happen but Joe Biden saying that he's going to like to him with 100% certainty led you to, everybody started making their checklist and then you start going through them. And now there's no chance for a big reveal almost. I mean, I just don't know that there's a perfect person for this, for this selection. But I guess we'll see. I don't know there's a perfect person either. And, but I guess that doesn't exactly make it, um, different because who was Hillary's perfect person? Who, by the way, was Barack Obama's perfect person? You know, I think Joe

Biden was kind of only that in hindsight. And because Obama was going to, basically run away and win that election anyway, minus some crazy thing happening. I just think when, in terms of shrinking this list, the thing about coronavirus to me just changes the game here incredibly because I just think that kind of very interesting, extremely talented, but without the kind of big time experience person just becomes a lot harder for him to pick, no matter who they are. I'd say it's the same about Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, for instance, right? Doing good job, apparently, we chronifies everything.

She's a first-term governor. I just don't, I don't see that happening here because the world has changed a ton in the last couple of weeks. And I also think by, even beyond that, Joe Biden has a particular image of what a vice president should be. And that image is basically Joe Biden, right? It's this experienced figure who knows people and knows everything. rather than the kind of, you know, hot prospect who comes out of left field.

And I'd just be real shocked if he, there's no Joe Biden equivalent, some dude who was like way more experience than the guy who was at the top of the ticket. But I just think, I think he's going to, I think he's going to lean that way. Yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter is he, I mean, if he's looking at it that way, he's actually, I mean, that's sort of half right, but in the wrong direction. I mean, he is, he, he needs a Joe Biden, but I mean, he is the Joe Biden. But, I mean, he is the Joe Biden on the car. I mean, literally, he is the Joe Biden on the ticket. In a lot of ways, he does what a vice president would normally do, right? He shores up a certain, you know, designated voting block.

He, he, he, he adds a certain sort of, like, personality appeal where, or another person would be, you know, the main candidate might be lacking. Yeah, it's, it's hard to imagine exactly what the model is unless the model is actually Mike Pence and, and Donald Trump, right? I mean, at this point, given. given Joe Biden's experience and frankly his, you know, his age and everything else.

I mean, Joe Biden is the guy that like gets you past the finish line. What he needs is someone who's like connected and functional and can like, you know, drive most of the agenda. And whether that's, uh, you know, Elizabeth Warren is clearly like driven in that direction or someone who's,

you know, maybe even more institutional than that. I don't know. But, you know, I would, I would love to see him make like a deeply practical choice of someone who's going to be like,

you know, taking the lead in every important meeting that he has to sit in on. The difference I would say from the, from the examples you cite is that Joe Biden is old. So this could and there's a lot of, and by the way, speaking of things that were floated at the beginning of the race, there's a sense that maybe Joe Biden is a one-term president by his choice. And so that he will need to hand this off to somebody in a couple of years if he were to win.

So that's in this too, right? It has to be somebody here like, this person is ready to go pretty much right now and definitely ready to go in two years, you know, to run for president themselves. If you want to, by the way, talk, talk me into Maggie Hason from New Hampshire being on this list, Tammy Baldwin from from Wisconsin, they certainly fit the bill too. I'm just thinking, I just think, I have a feeling it's going to be on this list. Let's go through these people one by one real quick.

Elizabeth Warren, as you point out, there is this, you know, kind of holy shit, basically the opposite of the whoopee cushion effect to announcing her as his V. There is some outreach to Bernie Sanders voters there. There is this sense, I think it would be helpful to Biden to add some element to his candidacy that this isn't just going to be business as usual politics. Right. Now we're talking about bailing out airlines and things like that, right? There is going to be this sense of American voters saying like, oh my gosh, we're going to

get rid of Donald Trump, but we're just going to sign up for the old. thing, which was, you know, we know how this is going to go. Paul Glastris in Washington Monthly actually makes an argument that Biden should just name Warren right now because Warren is in the Senate and she's, you know, talking about all these things about bailouts and how if we bail people out, what are the rules? And he's essentially saying her pronouncements on the Senate floor would be seen as the presumptive word of the word of the presumptive Democratic nominee. essentially Biden would be in this policy fight right now, you know, with Warren essentially speaking for him.

That's pretty interesting. The downside to me about Biden and Warren is I just don't know if they could get along politically speaking. Yeah. They're so, they're so different. And I say that as a compliment mostly to Elizabeth Warren. I just don't know that she's going to want to basically adopt Bidenism as her politics. and even if she feels she could have such a good effect on him and push him like she already has with a bankruptcy bill, him adopting her ideas about that. I just don't know that she's going to want to completely, that that's going to completely

work for either one of them. Yeah. I mean, practically that is almost inside. And that has to be true, right? I mean, I think from Elizabeth Warren's side, I mean, obviously the Obama administration was different than a Biden administration will be. But Elizabeth Warren was, you know, interested in joining the Obama administration as chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So it's not like she's averse to being in a position of, you know, as a high-ranking functionary in the central, you know, in the executive branch. I mean, I think that she must have been on some level cognizant of the fact she would not have had the final call on everything that came across her desk being a part of the Obama administration. Obviously, the Obama administration is different than the, you know, different than the potential Biden administration. But that. That said, I don't know that, I mean, listen, the case for Biden, I mean, there's a lot of cases for Biden, but the liberal case for Biden has to be in large part that he's evolved so significantly on all of these issues that he was utterly wrong in, wrong on during the previous 30 years of his public life, right?

And you can talk about Bidenism and whatever that means, but at the end of the day, the case has to be that it's a, that it's a more of a more of a, more of a, more of a. platform of of practicality and gumption than actual like philosophy or morality. And, and I, and, and, you know, that's, that's a hard thing to admit as a candidate, I guess. I mean, to really say outright. But like, I don't see like a direct, despite the fact that he's out there campaigning on, like, you know, not like anything but Medicare for all. He has evolved dramatically. And hopefully, if there's, you know, any hope for liberalism in America will continue to do so. So, I mean, I think it's, I think it's feasible that both parties could find the middle ground. Now, practically, I think you're absolutely right that that wouldn't happen.

Let's talk about Amy Klobuchar in a sense. As you say, the downside is obvious. Too safe. Too much like Biden, too much almost of a comfort selection for him. The upside to picking her, I think, is if winning this election is as simple as flipping Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. And to some extent, I think that is, this election is as simple as that. Then you could argue she's the one who's best equipped to accomplish that narrow goal.

You know, her entire being, as we discussed during the primaries, is I am the face of Midwestern experience and common sense with this very kind of lethal edge, especially when I'm talking about Pete Buttigieg. I can go in there when I know those voters I can go win those votes combined you know especially alongside

Joey Biden from Scranton PA and basically just deliver the narrow electoral mission of this campaign that feels a little bit too cute or a little bit too safe that feels a little bit like

a little bit you know not quite John Edwardsy but in that same line like I'm not exactly sure that I guess I think that I've said this before, but if we're, I mean, I think it's totally feasible that this is going to be another marginal election and that Joe Biden will win strictly because he opened up two extra campaign offices that Hillary Clinton didn't open. But it's important, you cannot run your campaign that way. And Clobetar feels like the choice of the selection of that campaign. Right. It's just too, it's too comfortable of a choice. I'd just say don't underestimate how safe Joe Biden wants to be. Yeah, yeah. We should not. I mean, this is a dude who's just been going around saying, results not revolution, right? Incriminalism. And he can argue based on the results of the primary that that worked as crazy as it

seemed that that was the winning number for him. So I just whatever, whomever he picks in terms of Kamala Harris also feels politically, I think, at least on terms of like actual issue positions very safe. though picking an African-American woman to be your vice president just carries with it a whole different feeling than picking Amy Klobuchar to be your vice president. In electoral terms, Hillary Clinton had a not insignificant problem that a large number of African-American voters who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 just stayed home in 2016, right? So that's an issue. Jim Clyburn, who we know is the savior of Joe Biden's campaign, has come out and. said, I would prefer the running mate to be an African-American woman.

The downside, I think, with Harris is interesting because as you say, I'm not sure that Kamala Harris revealed herself as a good candidate during her somewhat brief run for president. Now, maybe the idea is she would be a better administrator, vice president, future president, than she is a candidate. So maybe that's part of this too. What do you think of her? I think the last thing you said is the argument, right? I mean, that's the case for her.

I think that, you know, maybe this wasn't the moment for her to be running for president. Maybe she needed a few more reps, maybe whatever other, you know, metaphor you want to say. But like, she certainly has a lot, there's a reason why she was touted as a future presidential candidate for so long. I mean, she is, and I think she could potentially be effective in that role. Now, you know, when you don't have, you know, when she didn't set the world on fire during this run, obviously,

and she's got a lot of, a lot of questions to answer for the sort of Bernie Sanders side of the base. You know, if I see her called the cop on Twitter one more time, I think it's just going to like formally become part of her name. I think that it's difficult, but I think the upside, I think, you know, personally and I think, practically, I think that she's a better choice than Klobuchar. So, and certainly, like, I think that, like I said, I think the effect of the primary was that it's sort of diminished the wow factor of selecting her. But certainly that, you know, the image of them on stage together at the convention is going to be a sort of, is like a historical wow factor. You know, I mean, it's going to have, it's going to mean, it's going to have a deeper meaning, certainly than seeing him and, you know, Klobuchar standing side by side. So, and I think, and obviously Jim Clyburn's going to carry a lot of weight in this conversation, too. Yeah. And I think in Kamala Harris has a very compelling personal story, some of which, by the way she used against Biden in that famous debunkers. bait that will be an interesting part of a campaign. And boy, this is, again, it's a small list, but it's an interesting list. And it will reveal a lot about the way Biden thinks he's going to win this election and

then govern afterwards. Again, we're assuming a lot. I want to talk about media layoffs, David. Max Reed made a point on Twitter the other day that after coronavirus, our cities aren't going to look the same. those cool movie theaters and used bookstores that you and I love, many of them are going to be closed, and they're probably not going to open again.

I think we could say the same thing about the media. The Kroger and Wright Aid of media is not going to be killed off by coronavirus. It's the cool used bookstore of media that's going to be hurt by this. The little oddities of our world that make it a snazzy place, the kind of muckraking joints that don't have huge margins. just a little roundup here of cuts we've already seen across the country in Alt Weeklys. The San Antonio Current laid off 10 employees Wednesday due to advertising. The majority of our advertisers are ceasing operations as quarantine measures go into effect.

The Alt Weekly Creative Loafing Tampa Bay laid off seven of 12 employees. Metro Times and Detroit, eight staffers. The Cleveland Scene 5. The Oklahoma Gazette lays off the state. staff and ceases print publication at least temporarily. Voice media, which owns Altweeklies in Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, sends an email to employees saying you have to take a pay cut of between 25 and 35%. And even that may not be enough, they say to management.

I just feel that as a category, that's the most endangered one right now. and we could in weeks, months, however long, it takes for life to get back to quote unquote normal. When that period comes, we could be facing a world where that whole category basically doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's really frustrating. It's really frustrating. I mean, it's not specific to media, publishing anything else.

And, you know, we see a lot of stories that are sort of, of bunk, you know, that are out there on social media and stuff. But there's too many of them for them to all be untrue. Just story after story of companies that seem to be using the coronavirus and just like, you know, whatever downturn, this is, that's already come into effect as an excuse just to lay off all the people that they've been wanting to lay off for a while, but we're waiting for like a PR pass, you know? Obviously, there's some financial reality to this and economic reality and sure, like, everybody can prove, you know, can show you the receipt that tells you that, that, you know, the layoffs were necessary. But, I mean, this is everything that Elizabeth Warren

and to a certain extent Bernie Sanders were running on. I mean, these corporations, even not corporations, businesses have a social responsibility to our country to not be doing this right now. And they're about to just be, like, handed out a bunch of loans from the federal government, and that's not going to get anybody their jobs back. I think you're right. It's the new reality. And I think that it's going to be, that all moralizing aside, it's going to, our country is going to really suffer for it. We have, we're going to have a thoroughly hobbled media landscape, even more so than it was when this thing started. And that's the exact opposite of what we need in a world where, like, we talked about it before, where the word, we're like the

honest truth about coronavirus just wasn't getting to people fast enough. You know, I mean, there, there, people, I mean, the media was not as equipped as it should have been, largely because of the sort of hobbling layoffs over the past decade to be answering questions for the people that are begging for those answers. And that's a real shame. Yeah. And I think that all weekly category, I mean, we've seen it be so decimated anyway, right? Either closed in some cases, zombieified, you know, in the cases of like LA Weekly in places like that. So there wasn't like, there wasn't much left. Then you take away, and I'm not, again, I'm not letting those proprietors off the hook,

but you take away like all the concert ads, right, that those things are powered on, right? No concerts going on right now. You know, all those kinds of things that floated that place, restaurant ads, those kinds of things, those are all closed. So that's not great. We learned today that Playboy is killing its print edition as part of the coronavirus. Baron Ernst points us to this headline Coronavirus kills 66 year old playboy

That was somebody's comedy attempt Also on Tuesday Los Angeles radio station Krog fired the staff of its morning show Kevin in the morning with Ali and Jensen aka formerly Kevin and Bean Which was wild That seemed to be at least it was sold by the radio station

As something we wanted to do anyway Not sure why like a couple of days into the pandemic when people are turning to familiar voices on the radio. That way that would be the time to do it. That was weird. The other one that caught my eye was the athletic, offering 90 days free to join the athletic. Now, they're an interesting case study, right? Because their whole cell, or a lot of their cell anyway, was this is just sports writing.

This is sports writing like you used to get from your newspaper sports page. In a lot of ways, it's quite a bit better. It's farther ranging. It's more imaginative, et cetera, et cetera. But it's sports writing, right? We're not one of those places where we are essentially do sports writing and pop culture writing as one thing. No, like the ringers. Right.

Or like every sports radio station that does like wire recaps and stuff like that. We stick to sports. Now there are no sports. So there's a question of what happens to the athletic. something you and I have talked about it various times financially. Can you still get new people on board to subscribe when you just don't, other than the offseason of the NFL, which is just absolutely unkillable, you're just not going to have that drip, drip of news for maybe months.

And, you know, again, I don't know how many, here's a cool thing that happened in 1992. And I'd say this is not just about the athletic, but any of us, we can do and still keep people attention. You know, at some point, they're like, okay, I got it. You know, what else is going on? So that's a good one. You want to do a little listener mail, David? Yeah, let's do it. This comes from Josh Peterson. This says, Brian, how many times do you smash your head to a wall the last few days when someone mentions what will happen to TV ratings if games have no fans? This was actually written before the games were canceled. I am, um, coronavirus really clarifies a lot of things.

If sports TV ratings were my least favorite thing before the virus, they are now in a sub-basement of least favorite things. And this whole idea, I'm interested in the ESPN, what is ESPN going to do? But at some extent, ESPN is just like playing three-card money right now. They're just doing it. They're doing it. They're doing it. There's something else.

There's something else to watch. and I'm not really sure there's we've seen like this great post-sport strategy for any of these places and at least I haven't. This comes from Jace Barton, David. We touched on this a little bit. I wanted to re-ask it to you formally though. How do you think the coronavirus outbreak would be different

in the world of 20 years ago? To what extent does the rise of social media in the ever faster news cycle help or hurt the world's response? I kind of want to take the first part of that. Okay. Let's say coronavirus breaks out in 2000. You and I sitting there using our dial-up modem from home, maybe. What does that world look like? Oh, man. I mean, we'd be getting so much of our information from word of mouth, right?

I mean, I'm out here in the relative wilderness compared to the life I normally live, but, you know, I've gotten as much information prior to everything kind of shutting down from like the people behind the counter shops and they have from like the local news and stuff and I got to imagine it would have been more like that um but I mean 20 years ago I'm trying to flash back that far thanks for reminding me that I had a dial-out modem back then because now I feel really old but um I you know I think I would have just been watching a lot more a lot of television to try to absorb everything right I mean I think we would have been like 20 years ago we're I think we're basically still like tuning into the nightly the evening news just to like tally up the, you know, the new numbers of sick people or whatever

else, right? Totally. Cable news was in its relative infancy. I'm not sure if your mom and my mom had cell phones in 2000. They did not. My mom did not. So, you know, even like calling your parents, you'd be calling the landline to check in. I just wonder, you know, it's like we've talked about how slow moving governments were and also information was about.

about don't go out, you know, sequester yourself. Don't, don't be around older people who are more sort of endangered by this. I really am interested how that would have spread and whether that would have spread faster or slower. I don't know that maybe it doesn't make a difference, especially if Donald Trump is president in this counterfactual. But, you know, if we were listening waiting for the NBC nightly news and probably wall-to-wall network specials during the day, I think.

because I think that world would have changed too without cable news being what it is. I just, I just wonder, you know, I really wonder how if we would have been any faster, slower, or maybe that all just kind of comes out in the wash eventually. Oh, man,

it's really, I mean, it's almost painful to think about it. If the answer is that we'd be, we would have been better off. I, I, I,

yeah, I don't, I'm better off. Just, just how the information would have been disseminated. Like you, you and I's kids are, their schools were closed.

Like, just think about how we would have found that out. Would it call the school in 2000? Like, there wasn't, there wasn't a wide-ranging email system, like for schools to send out info over email in 2000. No. I don't think. And so it's like, we just, like, call the secretary at the school and say,

hey, is school in today? Yeah, I mean, there were also, like, wait for your friends to call you? How far back were we going in time? There were also like general purpose phone numbers you could call, right? I mean, you could like call like the police, not 9-1-1, but like before 3-1-1. You could like call like any sort of government office and ask them if there was school, right? I mean, there would be, I mean, there would be, obviously it would be like on the crawl at the bottom of the TV screen, but you could also like like, like place a call of the public library and ask them like really interesting, really just basic questions about life. And sometimes they would have an answer for you. Yeah. You also just think when we talked about Fox News earlier, that was a but that didn't have nearly the oomph that it does now. And it would have been much smaller. And again, I think Judy Woodruff and, you know, Bernie Shaw type characters on CNN would have been the major news anchors giving you the news.

You know, you would have had O'Reilly and that kind of stuff. But it felt like that would have been a little more to the side. And that's interesting how this would have worked. Evan Bretzman sent us a letter, David says, if you listen to an audio book, this is not coronavirus related. If you listen to an audio book, are you allowed to say you read the book? You two seem as authoritative as anyone to make an official judgment. My instinct is to say no, but I'm not sure that there is a significant difference in this day and age, and more than anything else.

for lack of a better term for what you do with an audiobook that doesn't seem inherently misleading or insulting I'm inclined to say yes you can say you've read it just strictly for convenience sake for simplicity's sake

you're just saying like conversational it's too hard to attach the audiobook asterisk to the conversation like I read the David McCullough Pioneer's book but actually it was the audio book.

It's easier to say I read the new David McCullough. Like why get into a conversation about the methods of absorption when you're just actually talking about the content? I don't ever want to be anti-modernity and I don't like consider it any morally lower on a moral scale to consume something by audiobook. But it is kind of bullshit, isn't it? I mean, you know, and I hear and I have lots of friends to do that. It's like they just read a ton of books because they're just.

just consuming them very, very quickly in audio form, especially like in LA because you're driving everywhere. But it is kind of bullshit. Let's be honest. You don't even own the book, you know, you didn't look at the words. I know I sound, I know I sound really old here, but I just, I kind of don't count. I totally count it, but I kind of don't count it. I really don't. Well, what if someone says they read the press box this week? Are you accepting? Yeah, they picked us up at a local newsstand that had been deserted. This one, David, is from Kirk A. Bado. How would, and this is also written before this actually came to pass.

How would Brian and David pass the time if they were stuck at home in quarantine? I would have had a lot of different answers, I think, a week or two ago than I do right now. I mean, I think the practical answer is like, I'm just like spending a lot of time with my family and spending a lot of time trying to work and the intervening time. Yes. And as I can hear my baby yelling like three rooms away, I think, you know, that's a pretty good indication of how it's been my time. I mean, it's been, it's been wonderful and just completely scary and wild at the same time. So, you know, I think the reality is you just, you just, you keep trucking. Yeah, it feels like there's those Twitter side by sides, how I thought I would spend the quarantine and how I actually spent the quarantine.

Absolutely. And the how I thought is like me wearing a, you know, tweed jacket with a. an unlit pipe in my mouth and a stack of books that I'm just plowing through. I mean, I'm looking at my bedside table right now. It's like, you know, say nothing. I, you know, I never got to read that. I'd love to read that. Uh, you know, call the wild. I just saw the movie with my kids. I want to go back and read. It's like none of that is going to get read. Nothing, nothing of that is going to be done. What is going to be done is making sun butter and jelly sandwiches, you know, that that's going to get done. And teaching my kids like

Rando Geography Facts. That's going to get done over the next couple of weeks or months or whatever this is. This is from Keith Shapiro. I had to sneak this one in. I've loved the press box from day one, but does David Shoemaker wear his Bernie hoodie in the studio?

Now, only when I take off my Donald Trump sweater. I have to put it on. There is, and that has come up, let's say in more than one forum, that David Shoemaker is the real Bernie Brubrower. here. That's fantastic. Well, I have a lot of close friends and family that would love to love for that to be the case. No, I mean, I just like I'm, I am, I am much more sympathetic to, well, that's not true. I think, I think on the one hand, I'm, like, morally sympathetic to a lot

of what Bernie stands for. And I think that part of, you know, podcasting about this twice a week and engaging in such a deep level throws into relief, like the sort of, at least, me personally, the sort of, it separates the, you know, sort of shenanigans from the, from the moral issues and makes the moral issues something, you know, much clearer to me in some ways. But I think more than that, I mean, just as much as that, on the shenanigans side, you end up, you end up, you know, spending a lot of time thinking about it. And for me, sympathizing with the sort of just the impenetrability of a lot of our current political system. And I think in a lot of ways for a lot of people, Bernie Sanders sort of stood for

that. So, you know, I would say I'm much more sympathetic to Bernie Sanders than I am pro Bernie Sanders. But if anybody thinks that I'm, you know, too much in that corner, then like, I will, I will, I will, take that branding, whatever you want to say. I've known David Schumacher since he was 14 years old. And everything he just said is absolutely sincere. I just want to add that if when we were 14, David would say that he was known by anyone outside of our immediate circle as like as a borderline socialist or a social, it was a border of a socialist presidential candidate. That would have been very surprising to us as high school freshmen in Fort Worth, Texas. I just, I just, just, just, just want to put that out there. Let us do David Schumacher guests as a strain pen handling.

Okay. Monday's headline atop a review essay about a series of books about the ocean was a view to a krill. Yeah. A view to a krill. That was it. It had a really nice simplicity, didn't. This is a pre-quarantine headline. It was actually pointed out by Maggie Haberman on Twitter.

It went atop an article on on New York One.com, which is an outlet. I don't know that I've ever actually consumed. it was about taxes. And it was about a new, a potential new city tax in New York City. And it says there's no better example of someone benefiting from the current system of taxation than Mayor de Blasio, Bill de Blasio, who you might have read about during coronavirus. Sure. The city's progressive standard bear owns two houses in Park Slope that are roughly worth a combined 3.7 million. Whoa.

And he pays about $9,000 in taxes on them. Contrast that with the Bronx woman who's paying $5,000 a year on taxes on her home. That's worth just $584,000. Okay. So Bill de Blasio taxes, two houses in Park Slope. Okay? Those are your prompts here. This is a good one.

What was New York One.com's strained pun headline? First, I just want to say I was not aware that there were houses even in the Bronx that only cost $500,000 and I will be investigating, I think, in the near future. Not that I have anything resembling that. And also two houses that total $3 million in Park Slope. I mean, those must be like, one of those must be like a garage or something. I mean, that property values down there are ridiculous. But to take the point, to actually take the question, it's a piece about how he should have to pay more tax. yeah essentially two houses I want to I want to I want to I want to emphasize that and and more tax

two house two house two house two house town two house both both your house again about it together but oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

oh I know this I know this what is it on both your houses if Chris were sitting here would have already gotten it oh oh oh oh oh oh a pox on both your houses right So in other words, instead it's attacks on both your houses.

Attacks on both your houses. Yes, that's fantastic. That's fantastic work. Some good work over there at NYU1.com. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, research by Erica Servantes and Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Jim Cunningham.

We're back Monday or Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.