The Press Box - The NBA’s China Problem, Chuck Todd Loses It, and Biden’s Ukraine Response | The Press Box

Episode Date: October 8, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the response to Daryl Morey’s tweet about Hong Kong (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (22:30), Chuck Todd losing his patience (24:45), plus the fallout from last week’s 'Sports Illustrated' layoffs (39:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome to the trailer for The Road Taken with CT and Bayo. I'm Bayo, and I'm CT. We've embarked on a massive world tour and are excited to experience all the thrills and boredom that entails. To help us process our own experiences along the way, we'll be having conversations with peers, idols, and maybe a rando or two. The Road Taken with CT and Bayo, part of the Ringer podcast network on all podcast platforms. David, the movie Joker finished number one at the box office this weekend. Prompting every single media outlet in America to use the headline, Joker laughs all the way to the bank.

What I want to know is, had Joker not finished number one, what headline might we all have used to describe the result? I have no idea to answer this question. Joker's parents killed right in front of him. Yeah. Is his face red? Oh, that's good. Jim just messaged me Joker foiled again. That's fantastic.

Yeah, Wham, Powell, Joker foiled again. That's pretty good. Yeah, you definitely most newspaper headlines would lean on the old Batman show. That's a great way to show your job. dismissiveness of the whole thing. How about a picture of Walking Phoenix and why is this man smiling? No, seriously. Why is this man's smile?

We are the Caesar Romero of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots of things to get to today, including the unflappable Chuck Todd becoming flappable in the wake of the Trump Ukraine scandal. We'll talk about Joe Biden's struggles to respond to and maybe even benefit from that scandal. Plus what the media world should do after last week's Sports Illustrated Bloodletting and the literary style of one Eric Trump.

But David, I think we've got to start off with the unfolding and potentially gigantic faceoff between the NBA and China. This Friday, Daryl Mory, GM of the Houston Rockets, posted a picture or image that read fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong, which is how everything began. Protests have been going on in Hong Kong since June 9th. They are complex, but they revolve around the idea that the Chinese government is interfering with Hong Kong's semi-autonomous government. In fairly short order, Mori deleted the tweet and said, I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China.

I've had a lot of opportunities since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives. and I just want to stop there and note how amazed I am, and I assume you are too, about how these giant moments start. Yeah. A Friday night tweet from the general manager of the Rockets that, man, if I had been on Twitter and had happened by that, I'm not sure I would have noticed that at all. No. And certainly wouldn't have expected that that would cause an international incident.

there's a lot of subjects that we touch on on this show where I feel a little bit guilty for having not ever touched on them before we do touch on them this is one that certainly fits that bill but I think you're exactly right that like this is that we have to acknowledge the organic nature in which some of this stuff especially I mean it's it's such a it's such a really particular thing to our point in history that we should be on on some level sort of aware of but also grateful for you know that this stuff can erupt in the way it is but This is a wild story that you're right. I mean, just a weekend tweet is calling into focus one of like the largest international issues and geopolitical issues of our time. And yeah, and that apology turned out to be too late. In the ringer, John Gonzalez reported that the rocket's ownership, quote, has debated more his employment status and whether to replace him. We then got a cascade of apologies and pseudo apologies, you know, which are. are remarkable, David, because the NBA is the league that has staked out that we encourage our players to speak their minds corner.

The league first said, we recognize the views expressed by Darrell Mori have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable. They apparently posted a statement on Chinese social media that was even tougher, saying they were extremely disappointed in the inappropriate comment. That's according to the New York Times' translation. Tillman Fertita, owner of the Houston Rockets, said, listen, Darry does not speak for the Rockets. Our presence in Tokyo is all about the promotion of the NBA internationally, and we are not a political organization. And here, of all people, is James Hardin,

aka the Richard Holbrook of the NBA. We love China. We love playing there. I know for both of us individually, we go there once or twice a year. They show us the most important love. So, you know, we appreciate them as a fan base and we love everything, you know, they're about. And, you know, we appreciate their support that they give us individually and as an organization. So, you know, we love you.

He was standing next to Russell Westbrook when he said that, completing the comedy of that particular exchange. We also got this. I'm sure you saw this, David, last night, a long and fairly weird piece of history spaining from Joseph Sy, the new owner of the Brooklyn Nets. called the protests a, quote, separatist movement and said it was a third rail issue for, quote, all citizens of China. The Washington Post, Felicia Somnes, who is a former Beijing correspondent, tweets,

so much of the language here, meaning in size statement, echoes the Chinese government's rhetoric from calling Hong Kong protests a separatist movement, they're not, to describing China's 1.4 billion fans as united in anger over a tweet, which would be difficult, seeing as Twitter is blocked in China.

So that's where we are there. As to what the NBA is trying to do here, I thought Jason Gay said it really well in a, excuse me, sorry to insult Jason, a Wall Street Journal column. The New York, the league, excuse me, is trying to thread a needle here, protecting its business interests

while attempting to stay true to its self-touted principles. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, China does not appear impressed, and back home, the NBA is getting clobbered for what looks a lot like fealty. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think we should both say formally that we have great respect for the history and culture of China and that the great nation of China can do no wrong. But I think that that's, I mean, there's this weird.

Bill actually mentioned this on his podcast. As I was listening to as I just walked in here. But this has echoes of this kind of similar similar fiasco that WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment, got themselves into earlier this year when they got into a financial agreement with Saudi Arabia. and, you know, it was hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, on the line here. And after they had inked it, everybody, I mean, that was, I think just before Jamal Khashoggi was murdered. But, you know, there are all of these, there's so much in the climate as far as that stuff goes that, you know, fans really started rejecting the proposal. And there was really nothing they could do. Sure.

But I think what you have in both cases is this sort of like, it's not terribly difficult to wrap one's mind around. I mean, there's this just like just competing interests of financial reality. Set aside the sort of moral expectations of the fan base. It's not even just the fan base anymore. I mean, I think, and this is not to make light of it or to lessen the significance of it, but this is not just the fans of the NBA who are outraged. Sort of the international audience of social media who's outraged. Not to mention seemingly every politician in America because they all release statements.

And somehow we got Ted Cruz. and Beto O'Rourke on the same side of something about this, which is pretty incredible. I mean, I know I'm really jaded, but my first reaction was I can't believe that none of these politicians, even especially the Republicans, have corporations in their district who were telling them to shut up about this stuff. I mean, if the NBA can silence its most powerful figures, like, is it not, I mean, isn't it sort of surprising that, like, major national politicians aren't in the same position? Anyway, maybe that's beside the point. But yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, the NBA is in a particularly difficult situation because even if they were tempted to be straight up and, you know, fully honest about the reality of the situation.

And Adam Silver has done his best to straddle the fence, to talk out of both sides of his mouth, do whatever he could. And whatever metaphor fits best in this situation. But the reality is, you know, the NBA stands to lose a lot of, I mean, to make a lot of money, to lose a lot of money. this thing goes south. And they are fully aware of the moral complexities or catastrophes, you know, involved in doing business with China. But at some point, you either have to make the decision that the money's worth it or, you know,

I mean, a case that WWE made that most people sort of didn't take too seriously, but, you know, is an argument you can make? Is it like, if we're going to, if we're going to affect any kind of change, we have to do it from sort of the inside.

and not just by refusing to do business with them because that won't make any difference. Who knows if they're – I mean, but whatever. At some point you make the affirmative decision to do this, and then it's kind of hard to be honest about it because part of the deal is that China doesn't want you to be like, yo, we know they're bad, you know? I mean, that doesn't really help anybody because for them, an international business deal is more than just a financial transaction. Yeah, and I think, you know, you're – the fact that it's like that Daryl Morey,

And I know the Rockets, you know, one thing we've learned is, you know, or been reminded of is how outsized the Rockets influence is in China because Yao Ming played for the Rockets. And even though he's long gone, the Rockets remain a favorite team in China because of that fact. The fact that this is Daryl Morey publishing a random tweet should suddenly even demand fealty. I mean, that's just ludicrous, right?

Like, you know, with no offense to Daryl Morey, about like who cares what Dary Morgie thinks, right? He made a tweet about the Hong Kong protests. If he felt strongly about it, then maybe that's the right thing to do because look,

it erupted into this sort of serious situation. I'm all for that. I'm just saying like from a geopolitical perspective, who cares about it? I mean, I'm happy for Daryl to say whatever he wants and express himself wherever he wants.

Please don't get me wrong on that. I'm just saying for that somehow to rise to international incident levels because, and I guess we have to ask ourselves is it rising to that because the NBA is just back down so quickly. And so we have so many apologies about what's going on there. Yes. I think that that's part of it. I mean, I think that someone in the office here asked what would happen if they had just told, if he had just taken down the tweet when ordered to do so and no other, you know, no one else in the NBA, the Houston

Rockins had said anything about it if we would have all been, if we would have still be talking about it right now. I mean, I think that's a real question. This did draw a lot of attention to it just by the leagues and Tillman-Fortita's action and reaction to it and everything else. So yeah, I mean, it's impossible to say, but who knows what the pressures were, but certainly the reaction made a lot of difference. I got to say, I'm fairly stunned by the media reaction or media non-reaction to this, because we live in a world where every single NBA trade, no matter how minor, sends reporters to battle stations. They've got reporting, they've got takes, they've got everything on it.

Then this gigantic story comes to light, and it is just dead silence from some of the NBA's biggest reporters. I mean, again, if people are working, and sometimes this happens, and people are working on popping a big piece, so if that's the case, I will come back on the next thing and say, hey, it was great, I read it, it was great, I look forward to it. I'm sorry, I'm mistaken,

but I read Adrian Woldrenowski's Twitter feed last night, and this morning, there's nothing about this. There's not even acknowledgement of this. Zach Lowe on his Twitter feed has one retweet of Howard Beck tweeting an explainer about what the Hong Kong protests are. I mean, this is your beat, right? This is a huge story. And I don't understand why. And again, it doesn't mean you have to clobber Adam Silver or, you know, clobber the owners for being for sort of cowtowing to China.

but I'm really interested in reporting on this. Like what is the state of crisis like in the league headquarters right now? How is the NBA trying to finesse this? What is their plan? Because I just feel like if this had been an NFL story and Roger Goodell or any NFL scandal that rose to even one tenth of the story, it would be absolutely all hands on deck from ESPN and outside ESPN to figure out what's going on.

Yeah. I mean, this is just one of those just bizarre moments. Maybe not bizarre. Maybe it totally makes total sense. But it's an interesting moment where everybody just seems really eager to stick to sports after seemingly like years of trying to get away from that, right? I mean, but like you said, what you want, I mean, the bare minimum is not something that that veers from, you know, a sports beat.

It's exactly there. This is a sports business story. I mean, this is a management story. And it's, and it, I mean, one would think that, you know, that if you have the, if you have the connections to, you know, scoop every draft pick by three minutes, you could probably, you probably have a pretty good window into what's going on at NBA HQ right now. Yeah. And I'll just say this. Even when, when Jimmy Patero came into ESPN, he formalized and probably to an extent downsized the definition of what he is acceptable to talk about at ESPN in terms of quote unquote, politics, right? This fits that definition. This is a sports story. This began with a tweet from

the GM of the Houston Rockets. It has repercussions for the NBA's business bottom line, if not the NBA totally in China. This is a sports story. It is absolutely coverable under ESPN's stated guidelines. Never mind how you feel about those guidelines. Never mind if you feel those are too small, this is absolutely a story. The end, by their own definition. So I don't, I don't get it. I don't get it. Well, I mean, who knows? Maybe maybe were they working on something, maybe something will pop up by the time that this comes out, but it does seem like there's a really significant silence that the only person on the ESPN side that I'm aware of that's broken it so far as Stephen A. Smith. Ramona was tweeting, Sheldron was tweeting about it last night. I saw her

tweeting about it for sure. Stephen A. There was some, I, I would love to see a video of the Stephen A thing before we weigh in on that. Maybe we'll do that on 30. I agree, but I think this, I think the Stephen A thing is not, I mean, you're right, I don't, I don't want to ascribe too much in the way of motive to him. But he did say that, I mean, straightforwardly, the ESPN has a lot of, you know, investment in the Chinese market as well. So, you know, that's something like that's going to have to be, it's, you know, they're in this, they're in a very similar position of the one, Adam Silver and the NBA are in. it's very strange it's I mean it's it's hard

you know from a journalistic point of view it's a little bit hard to square this circle but everybody you know I mean but it's not hard to imagine what's going on behind the scenes I guess I don't want to get to conspiracy theory but you know what I mean

yeah well let's let's wait and see and again to everybody I named and people I don't name it if there's something big coming I'll totally I'll put it on the press box feed, we'll talk it up on Friday, because I understand sometimes things work like this. I'm just surprised, again, these are, and I say that with respect, the leading voices in the NBA. And I'm surprised not to hear from them immediately and in whatever form on the biggest story in the NBA. That's all I'm saying.

Just to kind of put a bow on this, you're talking about, you know, at the beginning, you talked about issues that don't, you know, that kind of come out of nowhere and just totally dominate the news cycle based on just a tweet or whatever. And, and also, talking about the the implications or sort of the pressures that big news outlets and other people are facing. Imagine if you were just gone, if you were at a pitch meeting and you were just like, hey, I have a great story. One of the NBA's biggest sources of income is a very problematic state.

This is not stating my opinion, but if you were like, one of the NBA's biggest source of income comes from a oppressor of human rights. play a totalitarian state with concentration camps. You know, I mean, if you would pitch this in the values of terms, any editor would be like, please, like, can we get that on the front page tomorrow? And notably, it's a, you know, story that is very, that is almost never told. It's going to be interesting. I've always thought that Adam Silver, Adam Silver's had a different relationship with the NBA

Press Corps than just about any commissioner of any sports league ever. You know, probably maybe early Pete Roselle is about a. as close as you can get. Oh, yeah. And part of that's because of his own stewardship of the NBA, not to take credit away from him, but I think part of it is also the nature of the NBA press corps. I always thought that was going to end,

or at least in our different phase, when this labor agreement sort of got to, came to a head. And you had Adam Silver on one side and LeBron James and the players everybody likes on the other side. And it was an adversarial relationship, and journalists sort of had to think of him differently. This might be that moment where, you know, we might, we might have reached it now where it's just, you know, again, and again, it's not to say that Adam Silver hasn't had great moments, that he is not, you know, on balance probably better than your average commissioner, certainly than the guys running hockey in the NFL.

But it's also to say that this guy is a businessman and he should be covered with skepticism. and he should be covered, you know, as somebody who, when he does something, whatever it is, you start with the thing of, you start with the question of, is this any good? Rather than, oh, here is another benign act from Adam Silver. And I just wonder if this is really going to change it. Because as you say, he is working like mad to say, oh, no, no, no, we do respect the right of free expression for our players and people like Darrell Morey. But we also want to conserve all this business in China. I'm fascinated to watch to see if that changes the way.

Again, I think there's plenty of pressure and plenty of good columns today from non-basketball media. I'm interested in basketball meeting. Because, again, if you look at the way the NFL press corps treats the NFL front office, it's just fundamentally different than the NBA meeting. So I'm interested to see how that goes. like you said, I mean, Adam Silver's situation is, I'll say he's a widely liked guy, right? I mean, it's a, and he's found himself in a, in a situation, not entirely of his own creation, but certainly one that they could, he could have gotten out in front of. But, and I think that that's the,

I think that what we see here, I mean, on a very base moral level is like, uh, sometimes we get ourselves, sometimes we find ourselves into really intractable moral quandaries, right? And, and, uh, And I don't think that there's any just sort of like hand-wavy forgiveness that the NBA gets. But also this is a, you know, a business tie they've had for a long time. I guess the situation in Hong Kong right now is, you know, very dire, is much more serious than it was in moments previous. And I encourage everybody to learn all they can about it. And, you know, more than a passing thank you to Zach Lowe for tweeting an explainer about it. You know, because more people need to understand what's going on.

That it took a tweet from Darry to get us to have this conversation, I think, is both significant in terms of, like, our own myopia, but also, I mean, but it's also, like I said, something in the end that I think we're all better for having the conversation. So it does feel like one of those things that, you know, I was talking to Dan Devine before he went on the NBA show today to discuss this very thing. And we're all just sort of like, he and I were both just like, well, we're going to, one of us is going to, you know, one of our both of us is. is going to go on a podcast today and probably say something we really regret, something that we wish we could take back in like two days, you know, not even like two months or two years or anything like that. It's a difficult situation.

And I think we should all be, like, aware of that at the same time as we're like, you know, endeavoring to understand all that we can about it. And, you know, try to understand as best we can before we proclaim one way or the other who we think is right. A couple of funny tweets I saw about that. how the NBA changes the subject from this very annoying subject for them. One from Angus Livingston

read, Adam Silver is going to pay Ben Simmons $14 million to hit a three in a preseason game. Yeah, it was funny. And then the other one from our very own Jason Kitsapseon. Urgent memo from the league office, someone please marry Kendall Jenner. Very good stuff. All right, time for 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 there was a whiskey ad making the rounds on Twitter last week I don't know if you glimpsed it

if you didn't take a listen to this it's a new way to get your drink on the Glenn Levitt has released an original whiskey drinking experience a collection of edible cocktail capsule made from seaweed meaning no need for a glass

ice or a cocktail stirr an edible cocktail capsule so it just looks like a little plastic bag full of whiskey did you just eat rather than pour into a glass

it was an overwork Twitter joke to say yeah I'm serious watch the ad it's an overward Twitter joke to say that this looks this is an alcoholic tide pod thanks to Pondcon Paltta for that one I'm not kidding

they're also multi-colored isn't that just drugs I don't understand. If you eat it, if you swallow a thing and you get messed up, like, okay,

that's cool. I got to say, until I saw the ad, I did not know the whiskey was called the Glenn Livet. So it's more the Ohio State University

and less Ukraine. The Glenn Livet, who knew? R. Kelly, who is facing sex trafficking charges in a Brooklyn court, well,

last week, the singer-songwriter was denied bail. He was denied bail. It was an overwork. Twitter joke to say, I believe he's a flight risk. I believe he's a flight risk.

I believe. I get it. Yeah. Thanks to Tony Groves for that one. Back in the overwork this week. And finally, Josh Rogan, a Washington Post columnist, did one of those ever-present Twitter surveys. He wrote, name your top three public figures you wish we're still alive right now to comment

on what's happening in our country. A lot of great overworks there. But my favorite was Abraham Lincoln. Malcolm X and Ben Sass. Let's see if you wish we're alive right now to comment on the Trump administration stuff. If you clown Ben Sass and we encourage that, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week.

All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And let us begin with Chuck Todd, who is host of NBC's Meet the Press, gets dragged a lot for playing the down the middle, both sides guy. Well, by Sunday morning, apparently even Todd had had enough. He was interviewing Ron Johnson, the Republican Senator from Wisconsin.

Todd asked Johnson why he winced at the suggestion that military aid to Ukraine and a Joe and Hunter Biden investigation would be linked together, which is of course at the heart of the Trump impeachment inquiry. Instead of answering the question, Senator Johnson starts kissing Trump's butt. And here we go. Senator, let me ask you this. One of the things that you came on here to do. I just want the truth, Chuck.

I just want the truth. So would I. You set this thing up, totally biased. I could never really get into the full narrative. We don't have enough time to go through all the things I can talk about in terms of my international president. You came here and chose to bring up something about Lisa Page and Peter Strauss. With something incredibly biased that I would never be able to get the truth out. Senator, I don't know why you just came on here to personally attack the press and avoid answering questions about what's happened here.

Because of your setup piece. It's pretty clear we're only dealing with the facts that we have, not the facts that you wish them to be. And I can't get the answers. And I can't get the answers. The American people can't get the answers. Something pretty fishy happened during the 2016 campaign and in the transition, the early part of the Trump presidency, and we still don't know. Robert Mueller, we do know the answers. Wow.

Chuck Todd, like you've never heard him before, David. Wow. I don't know what to do with this. it's really weird i don't know either i'm i'm sitting here thinking do we is this a are we going to have a conversation about whether or not this was like a planned outburst or whether he's actually reaches breaking point or are we is that is just having that conversation just totally beyond the point i mean just totally unnecessary right now i think it's i think it's mostly totally unnecessary because i don't think it actually affects anything

i do think it's sort of semi-significant that what we've seen since the ukraine's broke, especially since that thing that was sort of like a transcript came out, was that a certain type of Washington journalist who has kind of not been standing on the barricades yelling about Trump with any irregularity, has kind of been like, okay, that's it. I, you know, I can't, I can't take this anymore. And it's the Republican attempts at spin that have driven them to that point and purely as like a just media watcher journalistic matter, I think that's sort of fascinating. I think it's fascinating that we, that this is what got us there, right? The Muslim ban probably didn't get us there. You know, the various Trump outrages over the last couple

years didn't get us there. But this was the thing where it's like he was accused of something. He did it by his own admission and by his own semi-transcript that he released. And then these guys are coming on TV and trying to not even engage with it, but throw up all this other stuff. And that's the moment that broke people like Chuck Todd. I understand it. You know? I mean, it's a, yeah.

To have to have to deal with the level of discourse that you're left with. Yeah. And then to have people who won't even engage in the subject. It's like, you're like, this is like the 45th person on your list people to come, like, defend President Trump. 45th might be generous. And they just come on there and just try to deflect. I mean, I might freak out on national television, too.

This is one of those things where Todd was getting the rare sort of victory lap on liberal Twitter. But if you kind of listen to the rest of the interview, it really just devolves into Johnson droning on about Hillary Clinton, bashing the media, holding up papers on camera and reading articles. which I think we should finally call like it's the full Giuliani right? You don't

you don't really have a defense so you just come on there just ready to throw as much shit as you can into the camera and hope that your performance I think that your performance is just so

unaccepting of even the basic premise of the host's questions that somehow that seems like Trump is fighting or that Trump won't let you know, himself be be steamrolled by his opponents or something like that.

I don't know. Maybe you can clarify that. There is something. No. We are getting close to a singular performance on the part of people that are defending Donald Trump. I really thought you're going to say singularity there.

And I was just really excited to see how that was going to work out. I'm not sure that we're that far away from the singularity. We've known for a long time that Trump places his, I mean, great value, if not the highest value

in people that are willing to go online and just like, dog fight in his defense, whether or not that defense is coherent in any sort of traditional way. And I think that, I mean, listen, I don't know that anybody, I don't know that anybody inside the Trump administration would have accepted the place they are now for, I mean, you know, the potential for impeachment and everything else that they're going through for their pursuit of dirt in Ukraine. but setting aside the potential implications for his presidency,

it's impossible to deny that this nonsense hasn't created a sea of probably interminable problems for Joe Biden, right? That this nonsense is actually going to stick in any, I mean, at least not, if not, like, it's not going to follow him to his, you know, to his, you know, encyclopedia entry, but it's certainly going to, like, dog his campaign to the point that he may not be able to, like, come back up from it. And if you need any more evidence that just like this nonsense is more than nonsense in some

kind of weird real way, then I mean, that's it, right? Joe. Yeah. Yeah, and that's exactly what I want to talk to you about next because there's a piece in New York Times with three co-authors, we'll put it on the press box Twitter feed about how poorly Biden has responded to this. And part of it is I think what you're talking about, which is there's just so much noise on the other side that it overshadowed anything that he would do. But according to the Times piece, he has really struggled to do it. And part of it is, you know,

his son is at the center of it and he is, you know, seemingly, you know, takes that very seriously and doesn't want to wade into something where he's going to constantly be talking about his son. But the other part is that Biden just doesn't seem to have anyone running his campaign other than Joe Biden. The Times reports he has no chief strategist,

quote, the campaign is mostly in his hands. And I think you and I have sort of seen this and tried to talk about it, at least periodically, for the last couple of months, is that Joe Biden's campaign doesn't seem like it's guided anything other than by Joe Biden's gut. Then they get this incredibly tricky story for them to handle, which either is the worst thing to happen in their campaign or the best, because Donald Trump is clearly, on some level, really fears something about Joe Biden

and yet they've been totally unable to respond to that and come up with a coherent message to deal with. What do you think? Yeah, I think you just said it. I mean, I think that you know, at times you feel like there's the broad strokes of a winning strategy,

but winning a presidential campaign in 2019 has got to be a lot more than platitudes. not, well, we should say that, like, that description of the Biden campaign sounds an awful lot like the way we were talking about the Trump campaign four years ago. Sure. So it's not like this is an, it's not like we have to struggle to find a comparison, a successful comparison, but that said, I mean, I'm not sure that anybody would endorse that as like as a, you know, construction for the sort of operation moving forward.

You know, it's fine to say, like, you know, President Trump, I'm not going anywhere as like your catchphrase, but like you got to be able to like say some other stuff somewhere along the line too to explain why, you know, you would suppose that someone was trying to back you into a corner. It does just seem a little bit helter-skelter. And like I said, it's broad strokes. It's got a, it's disheartening, you know, but a lot of the stuff, I mean, if you're a Biden supporter, it's disheartening, as an idealist, it's disheartening. But I mean, in general, you just got to, you should hope we could expect more out of like presidential candidates and their preparation. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, it seems like it's coming at a moment, too, in the Times nods of this, where Biden's poll numbers have not been great lately. They've softened a whole bunch. Biden's fundraising in the third quarter. border was $15 million, which is nearly $10 million less than both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. It's about $4 million less than Pete Buttigieg. He is trying to kind of figure out his candidacy and figure out what he's going to do. It also is like, it revolves around the sense that Biden didn't want to get into the muck with Trump. His whole MOW in this campaign was

I'm going big. I'm not going to make the mistake that Hillary did and get, get drawn. run into this stuff. He's not going to trap me. And then you have this story that is directly about Joe Biden. It's about a lot of things. And Biden has tried again to go to go higher, to quote Michelle Obama and say, no, this is about a, you know, a possible impeachable offense that the president committed. But at some level, this is about Biden. And if he can't, you know, work up a response to this, it's totally reasonable to ask what's going to happen when if you, if you were the candidate, if you were the nominee, and Trump is throwing stuff at you every week. Yeah, there's an NBC news story this weekend, too. The headline was Biden said he was

prepared for Trump attacks, but now he's struggling to respond. I think it touches on the New York Times piece that you mentioned. But yeah, I think that just sort of encapsulates the whole thing, right? I mean, the least you can do is prove now that you can shut down nonsense really quickly. Maybe you know, maybe you could you could make the, you can make the, you can make the, you can defend yourself by saying that the impeachment issue is actually what's giving life to this story and sort of dragging him into the muck along the way. But I'm not sure that that relieves you of your responsibility to actually like show that you can campaign, you know, and this is, uh, certainly he's not, he doesn't have, he doesn't

have the air time that maybe a, he would have if he's the, the, the Democratic nominee. But again, This is like, you had to be ready for this. You had to be more ready than he's proving to be right now. You know, it's, like I said, it's just, it's heartening. Speaking of Shades of 2016, this graph stuck out to me in the time story. And this should be a warning siren for anybody that thinks wants Joe Biden to be the nominee. Mr. Biden's campaign manager, Greg Schultz, acknowledged some of the problems in a briefing for Democratic donors. Dot, dot, dot.

Mr. Schultz assured the group that they had a path to the nomination that depended on winning South Carolina, the fourth primary state, and then scoring big victories in the Super Tuesday primaries in March. Remember 2016 where people like Marco Rubio said, what I'll do is Donald Trump's going to, I'm going to lose a whole bunch of primaries and caucuses. But then about four or five in, I'm going to start winning all the primaries in caucuses. That's not how it works. If somebody has won all the other ones, they usually keep winning or keep winning most of them. And this idea that we're going to have Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and then in South Carolina, his candidacy is finally going to come to life and then he's going to sweep super Tuesday.

That's not going to work. That's just not going to do it. And that to me is a losing campaign trying to spin things the best they can. There's just no, there is no reasonable chance that that's going to work. But, you know, I think if, you know, this idea that Warren is, if Warren wins Iowa, New Hampshire. Warren is going to be very, very hard to stop. Sure. Anyway, if I saw that and I were a Biden supporter, I would just be terrified.

Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think that there's a lot of reason to be scared that maybe some of this is kind of slipping its past. So you mentioned the fundraising numbers at the top of the segment. I don't think we're talking about Bernie Sanders this week, but he made a whole bunch of money and then unfortunately had to have some heart surgery

and, you know, get well soon, Senator Sanders. But also Pete Buttigieg made with that big hall. I think there's a lot of like, I mean, there's a lot of very interesting stuff coming out of the fundraising numbers that Joe Biden probably would be getting dogged for if it weren't for all this stuff. But anyway, yeah, I think that the idea that,

I mean, listen, Biden's got good numbers. He's going to still make a lot of money. He's going to be around for a while if he chooses to be. But I think in practical terms, you know, when you're talking about losing, I mean, losing primaries and stuff, I mean, like, professing inevitability has its consequences, right? I mean, if you cease to be, if you cease to seem inevitable, then what's the platform? I got another topic here for you, David, which is what happens after what just happened at Sports Illustrated. Last Thursday was a horrible day in our little corner of digital media. Sports Illustrated laid off about 40% of staffers, a company called Maven, or, you know,

the maven or the maven is replacing staffers with cheap contractors who will spit out content we got a little taste of what that content looked like over the weekend and it was as bad and boring as you'd expect got an interesting DM i want to share with you from a sports writer who writes for a maven like site i'll keep his identity under wraps but the sports writer says i write for one of these sites that are fueled by VC money and rely on cheaply paid labor am i and others like me part of the problem. I know a few of the guys working for the Maven sites, and it's all rather terrible when we see these people were fired. I just like writing about sports, and the little bit of money I get is fine compensation for me. I just wonder if I'm a perin, very small part

of the problem. Yeah. What do you say to that? Because that's a fascinating question to me, and I'd love to get your thoughts on that. I mean, it is a fascinating question. I remember, you know, years ago, when I started writing, well, I mean, I wasn't writing for profit initially, but like when I started writing, you know, for, I mean, in a way that people read it, people would often come to me. And I know the same with you, but people would often, you know, come to me and ask how to kind of like, how to get in, how to get, how to start their career or whatever. And I remember at the time, I used to say, just like, get to New York and figure out a way that you can, like, work for free, you know, get your bartending job.

or like get a bookstore job or do something so that you can you can get your foot in the door and just be and be nice and be available and there's a list of other things but one of them was like don't count on this being your primary source of income for a while and and it does make you wonder now like thinking about that out loud that's like if I'm part of the problem too if like the willingness is is part of the issue um I don't know it's hard to say I mean it's it's hard to fault anybody who's like young and hungry and like and interested in and you kind of willing to do anything for a job for a career that they, that they really want. But, you know, this is the sort of, that's that it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a really tough question because certainly that is a problem. I mean, that is, that contributes to, um, that contributes to the to the problems that Sports Illustrated and many others are facing. Yeah. And, you know, I, I think if I'm, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm apportioning what the problem is, I'm reserving the lion's share for the corporate overlords who are coming up with all this stuff. You know, that's, that is, that is, that is, that is probably more than 90% of it.

I'm reserving a tiny bit for people that are executing their orders. I mean, I, I, I guess one thing I didn't really get to say last week when we were talking about SI is, SI is the new SI is being co-edited by Steve Cannell and Ryan Hunt. At least according to LinkedIn, Steve Cannell has been at SI since 1995. Ryan Hunt's been there since 2008. And they were the ones who sent that really optimistic memo Wednesday before all the stuff went down that just seemed ridiculous in light of what actually happened on Thursday. They co-signed a memo that Kelsey McKinney reported on Deadspin today on Monday. And to me, I'm like, why are you doing this? You know, how are you wrapped up in all this and how are you co-signing on all this stuff? So to any, and I can't, I just can't fault anybody, especially in this economy for trying to, or I can't fault many people, I guess I should say.

I guess I could, I could come up with some examples, but for taking a low paying, half paying, nonpaying job to try to get into sports writing. I mean, I understand the moral, I understand there's a moral point there where you say, don't work for free because you are allowing yourself to be exploited and you're allowing other writers to be exploited sort of by extension. I totally understand that. And that is good. But there's also a whole class of people who are like, I'm a CPA. I'm a lawyer. I do another job. And I'm being asked to write to blog about a team I like for one of these websites. in my few spare hours of the day. So essentially we're saying like that person should just say no to that.

That person should demand a wage that they're not going to get. I mean, I guess you could say that. I guess you could say no, you know, do your own blog, do your own other thing. But they're going to these content mills because their stories are going to get a few more eyeballs there. I mean, I guess I'm kind of talking in circles here. but it's just very hard for me to pin the blame there when there's so many other culprits to go around. Yes, I think that's right.

And I think talking in circles is sort of where we all land. I mean, that was, I think, one of the working titles of this podcast, so we shouldn't be too surprised. But, no, but I mean, that's it. You get to these, I mean, listen, we all can talk in platitudes, but like you get down to the nitty-gritty and you end up talking circles. That's just sort of, that's how a lot of this stuff goes. That doesn't mean you can't believe in the ideals

that you profess, It doesn't mean you can't work towards those, but it also means that it's probably a waste of, at times it's a waste of energy to demonize the, you know, the kind of smallest, the smallest instances, the smallest examples of the problems that are out there. Yeah, there's a big deadspin piece on Friday, too, by Laura Wagner, David Roth, and Kelsey McKinney. And one of the maven contributors in there was quoted saying, I would never want to step in the place to someone that was done wrong. I, dot, dot, dot, dot. I hope everyone is able to find work quickly and would trade spots with him immediately if I could. especially if it meant to give them back what they had. So it's not like I think, you know,

these writers as a class are coming in with the idea of displacing people. In fact, I assume a lot of them are really, really uncomfortable with that idea. The other question, David, I got from people this week. In fact, from one writer was a really basic one, which is for people getting the industry, is like, what do I do? You know, if this is what sports media is,

if this is what the landscape is going to be and there's no, you know, obvious reason to think it's going to get a whole bunch better, at least in the near term, what do I do? And I don't have an answer for that either, guess what? But the only thing, the only thing I say to people is all the places I worked with one very narrow intern exception, all the places I worked did not exist when I was in high school. Yeah. Slate didn't exist. The Daily Beast didn't exist. Play RIP didn't exist. Grantland didn't RIP didn't exist and the ringer certainly didn't exist. None of those places existed. And if I'd gone to someone for advice early in high school, they would said, yeah, you need to get on with a newspaper, you need to cover high school sports, you need to do this, you need to that. They would have plotted out a whole course from me that would have been completely different.

Or go to J school, damn. Yeah, exactly. The only solace I would offer is that I don't think anybody knows anything. Now, it may be, it may in fact get a lot worse. It really might. It may get even worse than we think. Sports writing and the media may change in just completely grotesque in unrecognizable ways. But I don't know that anybody knows that at the moment. I don't think anybody has a handle on where this thing's going to go.

So that's my pep talk for the class of 2019. This is my word to all of the up-and-comers out there. When all of your favorite sports writers were where you are right now, and they were asking what they should do, they were asking career advice from people. It might not have felt as nihilistic as it does now, but I'm guessing, knowing, remembering them, recalling the mindset of what it's like to be in one's early 20s,

it probably felt about as nihilistic. I guarantee what nobody said to them was, like, practice your radio voice because there's a thing called podcasts coming along. You know, I mean, I guarantee that, like, I know for a fact that we've been through so many ups and downs of the way that we write online in the very short time that we've been writing online. I think that, you know,

there's a lot of people that are going through really hard times right now, and I think that, you know, we owe it to them not to be too flip about, you know, or just sort of hand-wavy about that whole situation. I've said that too many times today, but the, but, you know, there are a lot of ways there's a lot of different ways to succeed and there's a lot of ways that we can't even imagine right now.

So I think you're right. I think that there's, I think that commitment to, you know, what you love and what you want to do, as silly as it sounds, is like really the only sure thing. I got an identifier of the week for you, David.

You know, when you write an article and you mention a historical figure, you sort of pause and ask yourself, should I do a quick half a sentence to explain who this is? So if you're quoting, Roland Barst, did I say his name right? Roland Barnes?

I think he's just Bart, but go ahead. Roland Bart on wrestling. Do you need to write French philosopher Roland Bart? Exactly, yeah. Right. This was my favorite example ever. This is from a piece in the Hill on Friday, so adjust your expectations. Already good.

I'm already in. There we go. From Eric Trump, it doesn't matter what Eric Trump wrote. It really doesn't. What's funny is that he wanted to reference Marcus, Okay. Now, he could have written Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius or Marcus Aurelius comma who ruled Rome from dot, dot, dot. This is what Eric Trump wrote.

To quote the great Marcus Aurelius from the gladiator. Your faults as a son or my failures as a father. From the movie The Gladiator? Yes. Wow. To quote the great Marcus Aurelius from the gladiator. Oh my God Gladiator also doesn't have the in front of it

It's a Ukraine situation Like Glenn Livett It's um I just thought that was incredible now now I mean there's a way right As Marcus Aurelia says in the movie Gladiator Right Which is by the way a bizarre pull

You know I mean is it I don't know do is it the Trump family where Gladiator gets quoted again and again. And it's not, are you not entertained? It's that. Your faults is a son or my failures as a father. Was he looking for quotes about fatherhood? Anyway, I digress.

All right, time for David Chumacher, guess is a strain pun headline. Last Friday's pun tweet was, if you like subpoena colladas. And today's headline, David, comes from listener Ben Al Schuller. Hope I'm saying your name right, Ben. It's from the Boston Globe. apparently there are a ton of acorns in Boston this year.

The Globe reports of Boston, New England are having a mast year, which means oak trees are churning out fruit at a higher than normal rate. People have asked the city of Boston for street sweepers to come and clean up the acorns. The Globe quotes one report, quote, constituent reports many acorns in the street making it dangerous to walk down. Okay. Now pause right there on that final thought. Many acorns in the street making it dangerous to walk down and tell me what is the Boston Globes strained pun headline?

Dangerous to walk down a street because there's too many acorns? Mm-hmm. Am I going with like oak something? Or is this a is the pun? Acorn tripping. You gotta give me something here. What might you do if you're walking down the acorn-littered street? What might happen to the acorn?

Slit, trip and fall, or crunch? Clutch. Clutch the acorns, break the acorns. This is a delicious dish. May it reference a delicious dish that you cook up at a New England Thanksgiving? Acorn soup? Acorn soup? Acorn squash.

Squash. Acorn squashed. Oh. And by the way, the web headline was, and this is a great little moment in how you write your headlines for print versus the web. The web headline was, yes, there are a lot of acorns on the ground this season. Here's why. It just completely.

Just leaving that pun behind. Wow. They're A-B testing the hell out of that one. That's fantastic. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Al made a production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Friday. Bright and early with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Brian, when I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. That's a quote from Abraham Lincoln from the movie Lincoln. To quote the great Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln. See you, David. See you later, man.

It's the Lincoln. David, why are you doing this? I have no idea to answer this question. Because there's too many acorns Yeah, and how are you wrapped up in all this And how are you co-signing all this stuff? I don't want to get to conspiracy theory. And here we go.

I think there's a lot of reason to be scared. Sure. I mean, I might freak out on national television. Sure. What do I do? You had to be ready for this. It may in fact get a lot worse. It really might.

Yes. I don't have an answer for that either. Guess what? I guess I'm kind of talking in circles here, but what do I do? Get well soon. I don't think anybody knows anything. I mean, that was, I think, one of the working titles of this podcast, so, you know, we shouldn't be too surprised. I just wonder if I'm a part of the problem.

Yeah. What do you say to that? Because that's a fascinating question to me, and I'd love to get your thoughts on that. I mean, it is a fascinating question. cares. Yeah, but I'm not sure that that relieves you of your responsibility to actually show that you can stick to sports.

Wow. Wow.