The Press Box - The NFL Is Having an NBA Offseason. Plus, Lou Dobbs is Canceled.

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down the similarities between this year’s NFL offseason and a typical NBA offseason (3:50). Then they discuss recent media transactions, such as Fox News canceling Lou Dobbs’s show and Donald McNeil Jr. leaving The New York Times (20:30). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, a very interesting nugget in Friday's New York Times, Fox News's Janine Piro, aka Judge Janine, has a new streaming show called Castles USA where, quote, she visits castles around the country. What I want to know is, what is Castle's USA and how did it happen? What I want to know is what is the pitch process at Fox News right now? Can you and I just walk in and just be like, uh,

dogs, where did they come from and just get the green light? I mean, what is it? Okay, I will give Judge Jeannie this. Uh, I would love to see some American castles.

That's a, that's a thing I would like to see where I, in Waco, Texas, there is a castle, uh, just like sitting on a residential block. And I think the chip and Joanna Gaines own it now,

but forever it was just sort of, back when I lived there, it was just sort of sitting, laying fallow across the street from a giant cement gorilla that was painted differently for every season. But yeah, I always wondered about the deals with that castle.

I don't even know what the deal. I'll Google it today. But, you know, when you see a castle in the United States of America, it's normal to wonder what the hell does that thing do in there? Well, that was my question. How many American castles

are there going to be to sustain this show? I know of Hearst Castle There's White Castle There's Matt Castle Yeah I'm running And there's the Waco Castle with a gorilla across the street I'm starting to run a little low here

Also do you need a Do you need an official official designation To be a castle Or could you and I just build something and say Well it's a castle Yeah do you need like spin around I mean do you need like a moat I mean what is it what are the

What are the Yeah What is the the definition of castle? Okay I'm looking at there is actually a Wikipedia page for a list of castles in the United States. And going back to my original question, I guarantee this Wikipedia page was pulled up or rather printed out for this pitch meeting. Yeah, printed out, definitely.

There are quite a few of them. There are quite a few of them. I don't even know where to begin with making jokes here. But yeah, I think it's just most cannot properly be described as true castles, according to Wikipedia. So I think that goes to your point. They're primarily country houses, follies, or other types of buildings built to give the appearance of a castle. So on diners, drive-ins and dives, our pal Guy Fietti always does that moan of pleasure whenever he bites into a sandwich.

Yeah. Do we think Judge Janine will gaze at the inner Bailey of a castle and go, Mmm. I think if it were my show, I would, I would like start every episode with a game of throne style. Like I would have like a sword and I would point it at the castle and yell charge with the kid to the camera crew and we would all start running towards it. Yeah. You and you and you and like Jesse Waters and Judge Deneen everybody. Storm in the castle such as it is. Coming up on today's show, why the media started covering the NFL's off season like the NBA's off season. Plus Lou Dobbs has officially been canceled and two big names are out of the New York Times. All that. More on the the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Our Super Bowl reaction podcast went up last night if you want to check that out.

But David, let's start with something interesting you noticed about the NFL offseason that officially begins today. You and I have talked on this show before. You've written about it. Bill's talked about it a lot about how people care a lot more. In the NBA, people care more about the off season than the regular season. Or right now, we're coming up on trade season in the NBA, and people are going to start caring about refreshing hoops hype every five seconds on their computer,

way more than they ever checked out the box scores on ESPN.com. It's just a symptom of, well, a lot of different things, but it is the definition of our modern, the way we sort of absorb sports and the modern era. But it was always interesting that it was sort of isolated to basketball, and there's a lot of reasons for that. it's not isolated anymore baseball is obviously you know trade rumors are still a very big part of the game

and they function in a different way there but in the NFL the NFL the NFL always seemed like they were sort of separate separated off from that sort of hype hype machine until well there's been a slow trickle but really until now right

suddenly there's every quarterback in the league is available more of than James Hardin was before we got traded to the Nets. And every news story is about the potential for a quarterback. You know, listen, it's not like we didn't, it's not like five years ago, 10 years ago. We didn't have blogs from every team that were like breaking down the 10 quarterbacks that the Carolina Panthers should, you know, can get before next season. But that's blog fodder.

Now it's part of the national media conversation. And you can see it, I mean, leading up to the super. Bowl. I mean, the thing that we should be talking about is the Super Bowl. We had national reporters covering where Philadelphia's second best quarterback was going to get traded to. Yes. So the major quality of an NBA offseason, which is now, as you say, leaking into the NFL offseason is that star players not only change teams, but they change teams pretty frequent.

that had kind of been an NBA thing starting really in earnest with LeBron James and the decision in 2010. Yeah. And then amazingly, LeBron, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, if not the greatest, changed teams twice more after the decision. Talk about content. Well, here you have the NFL offseason. Deshawn Watson, star quarterback of the Houston Texans, wants a trade, apparently. The Lions traded quarterback Matt Stafford to the Rams for quarterback Jared Gough in draft picks. Carson Wentz, the second best quarterback of the Eagles, who you mentioned, may get traded.

The Cowboys have not signed their quarterback, Dag Prescott. Yeah. So you have all these guys either in play or potentially in play. And that's got to be factor number one. Yeah. To get us from NFL model to NBA model. Well, and a little, I mean, listen, there's a million big stars in the NBA, but the NFL is in some way, sort of, at least in the quarterback level,

more perfectly manufactured for this sort of hype machine, right? Because if you're a starting quarterback in the NFL, I mean, people care, people will care more about where, like, Gardner Minshu plays next year, just by default, by, of him being a former starter in the NFL, than just about any other professional athlete. I mean, to be a starting NFL quarterback is,

I mean, there's a very small set of these people, and you're either, you mean, you might have a big, you know, national profile like Minshu did for a brief period. You might be, you know, I mean, Dak Prescott is good, but Dak Prescott wouldn't have to be as good as he is to be famous because he's a Cowboys quarterback. That's a big deal, right?

These are all, you know, almost every quarterback is a borderline household name. The funny thing I've noticed this NFL offseason is how trades that seem interesting, but perhaps not likely to affect the Super Bowl or the main, whatever thrust of NFL history, much like their NBA counterparts suddenly become giant content machines.

Oh, yeah. Take that Lions Rams trade the other day. How many pieces have you read, podcasts have you listened to, breakdowns have you consumed that are about that thing? Matt Stafford for Jared Goff. We had a whole new cycle,

I mean, basically yesterday, speaking of the Panthers, about the Panthers failed bid for Matt Stafford, Right. I mean, we have like all like half of Twitter is talking about how Teddy Bridgewater must feel now that he was like presumably, it was reportedly offered up in a trade for a superior quarterback. I mean, it's it's it's never ending it feels like. And that's why it's tantalizing. Not only do you have all the little things. Okay, how did it affect this quarterback that wasn't even in the trade? How will it affect the lions? How will it affect the Rams? The Rams going to win the Super Bowl. But I also think at a more basic level, it's the easiest thing in the world to have an opinion about. Oh, yeah. Like if somebody asked you and I, how did the bucks shut down the chiefs offense in the Super Bowl last night? You and I could answer that question pretty cogently. But it's a complicated question. It would take some thinking and some research.

Who won the trade the Lions or the Rams? You and I could do it like that. It's just, it's simple, right? And it's also snackable in terms of content. I can have a tweet about why the Rams got the better end of the deal or why the Lions. or I can make a quick sports radio or podcast segment on that. Yeah. It's, it's, it fits our structure of sports right now, sports media.

Yeah, absolutely. It all just, it sort of spills off the tongue. When you talk about how NBA transactions started to become almost bigger than actual NBA basketball itself, a couple of things I think are really interesting about that. One is, transactions are really helpful to. sports media content makers because they eventize parts of the calendar

that would otherwise be really boring. So imagine your NBA writer, NBA podcaster. The finals end, uh-oh, what am I going to do for the next few months? Oh, wait, a very famous basketball player or semi-famous basketball player

is going to be traded or is going to sign with another team. Uh-oh, my programming's done. I got this. This was going to be a slow month. Now it's going to be a huge month. And, you know, I think the NFL, and it's funny, the NFL, because I almost think we take some of the NFL offseason stuff for granted. The NFL figured how to how to win April and May 30 years ago.

It's just they didn't do it specifically in like famous player is moving context, which the NBA does. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly, there's certainly been giant NFL trades, I mean, dating back decades. But it definitely feels like we're in a different situation now where we have a. superstar. I mean, particularly, we have superstar players who are sort of, you know, demanding or negotiating their exit from the franchise that sort of is identified by their own, by that quarterback's face, you know, I mean, it's a, it's a big deal. And, and you're right. I mean, the NFL, the NFL figured out how to own a couple months in the offseason, but it, but it often felt sort of isolated to those two months. It almost never infected the actual, the actual season, right?

I mean, there's a trade deadline, but like, how often did things actually, the trades of note actually happen in season? Or were those discussions even had? I think it was a couple of Super Bowls ago. I was down there with Kevin Clark, and I believe that's when Chris Stops Porzingis got traded to the Mavericks. I believe that was during Super Bowl week, if my memory's right. And it was kind of the ultimate thing we're talking about here. Here is the Super Bowl, 100 million viewers, like the biggest cultural event in American life. And there is this NBA trade with the famous-ish NBA.

player, but certainly not one of the top 10 players in the league, when he was hurt at the time. And all of a sudden, you could watch Twitter and, like, Super Bowl Twitter was fighting with NBA trade Twitter. And at least in the bounds of Twitter, maybe not in real life, but in the bounds of Twitter, they were kind of like having an even fight. But yeah, and let me tell you the other thing. I think another reason why transactions have become so appealing to sports media people like ourselves, in sports writing, the future is always more interesting than the present. Yeah, of course. So like that Lions Rams trade.

Now, imagine if I presented you with a guide that the Lions drafted the first round, like a defensive tackle from Auburn, you'd be like, oh, okay, that's kind of interesting. But if I tell you, ooh, David, two future first round picks, somehow that's like way more interesting because it's hypothetical. Well, I mean, people have talked about this in reference to the Stafford trade, that you make, you know, you can trade first round picks under the presumption that they're going to be high picks or whatever and that, you know, Bill Belichick, among others, realized that the first pick in the second round is somehow, or I'd say the last pick in the first round

is somehow worth three times more than the first pick in the second round just as a matter of perception, right? Yes. Like, I'll try to give you two first rounders for that, even if they were like, you know, written in stone to be the last pick. People would go nuts. But yeah, the unknown is what, it's not just journalism. I mean, it's what fandom is based on, right?

I mean, it's like there's always next year, you know? I mean, we're, we, if you knew for a fact, if someone told you, you know, that there would be 20 years before the Cowboys won another Super Bowl, that might actually affect your fandom, you know, in a way that, but in like reality, if it took 30 years, but every, every next year could always seem like the one, you'd hang on, you know. I think about that all the time now in terms of presidential campaigns, too. We're now having all the teased presidential campaigns for 2024. there's a really good chance that a lot of these are going to be more interesting as an idea than they are as an actual presidential campaign. Welcome to the Democrat field, the Democratic field of this past cycle. Totally.

Now the Republicans are doing it. Like I saw people parsing Nikki Haley's tweets. Like, oh, how is she positioning herself? Is she pro-Trump? But she's also different than Trump. And I'm like, Nikki Haley may have a fantastically successful run in 2024. There's a really good chance that the idea of Nikki Haley for president will yield more than Nikki Haley for president.

Yeah, let's not pretend that there's anything we can figure out about Nikki Haley today that makes her any different than Scott Walker in terms of like your viability as a candidate. You know, I mean, it's, we'll know when we're there right now. It's a fool's Aaron. You and I, I think, noticed how NBA transactions were becoming as big or bigger than actual basketball. I want to say around 2014, 2015, when Adrian Wodgenraski is really coming into his own at Yahoo and then at ESPN later.

What has fascinated me is that transactions now dominate almost every category of media. It's not just basketball. Think of every time something comes over Twitter that a director or a showrunner has signed up to do a new movie or a new project. Oh, yeah. It just goes crazy. James Mangold is going to direct the Star Wars show. give it take all my money james mangold i mean here we go let's let's do this i'd be so excited and like nothing has happened yet like that's interesting maybe that's really the brilliance of what

disney's done or at least it started with marvel obviously the marvel cinematic universe is that they created this this you know never-ending hype machine right they would like sign up directors when they were right out of uh and actors kind of right after they won an award or just had a had a critically acclaimed film or just did something interesting. And then, you know, they kind of created their own little, little hoops hype circle, you know, I mean, they did people just keep checking back in to see the updates on actor they love, director they love, or just interesting thing they saw a tweet about. And then by the time the movie comes out, you can hardly contain yourself.

It's not just about, you know, seeing Han Solo shoot something anymore. It's, it kind of hits all the different buttons of obsession. I think that gave it a turbo boost because you can think about. about it within the cinematic universe or multiple multiverse, whatever it is. But I also just think that stories in variety in the old days. Yeah. Just became stories for everybody. Like the announcement of a project, unless it was like Stephen Spielberg is going to make,

you know, super famous thing really had a pretty small, you know, it was intended for a very small audience. Now that just goes to everybody. And again, anything that is hypothetical and, in the future is much drives the content train as much as anything that's actually in front of us. My big one, remember, remember when the Suicide Squad trailer came out a few years ago? And I feel that was just like this day on Twitter. Oh my God, suicide squad.

Look at this. This is incredible. And then the actual movie came out and people were like, yeah, that was okay. And it was like, wait a second. We just spent like 900 combined hours talking about this trailer. And then when the movie came out, it was just kind of an afterthought. and nobody was like, yeah, that wasn't very good. If I remember correctly, the reaction of the trailer led to a recut of the movie

because the trailer didn't resemble the movie, but the trailer did really well. They wanted to make it seem the movie more like the trailer. Right. And the movie was, well, I mean, it might have been worse before, but, you know, it was not, probably not worth all the discussion. And it goes back to the bite-size thing we're talking about. You and I can have an opinion on a trailer. We can watch that.

It takes exactly a minute and a half or two minutes. and then we can have a take on it and say how excited we are and how we can't wait to see this. And it's so exciting. But when the actual thing comes out, you and I can also have a take on that, but that's more complicated. You know, like if you told me, tell me, David, what you think about the Netflix movie Mank versus, like, trailer for Mank. And those are just two different categories of thing. One is like, oh, I love black and white, citizen Kane, I'm in. this is all David Fincher, I'm there, baby.

And then the second one is like, oh, well, this is a longish, complicated story about screenwriting and, you know, like, okay. And you just see how that plays on two basically, on two totally different levels. Yeah, exactly. It's a totally, I mean, one's a, you know, YouTube reaction video and the other one's an essay, you know, I mean, they just, we don't, we're not trained to really consume the, the latter variety anymore. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate

British 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. How about an all Super Bowl edition of the overwork Twitter joke of the week? Are you ready for them? Sounds good to me, yeah.

All right, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers got a big lead in the second half of last night's game, it was an overwork Twitter joke to write Mike Pence can actually still give this to the Chiefs. Thanks to Eben M. Anderson and Michael Taylor for that. the Super Bowl halftime show starring the weekend.

David was sponsored by Pepsi. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write the Pepsi halftime show, but every song is about Coke. Thanks to Kenneth Nguyen, D.C, your friend Mike Nickfield, Aaron McDade and Lincoln, truly. Did you see the weekend's backup dancers who were wearing the kind of post-plastic surgery bandages on your face? Yeah, it's fantastic look.

Yeah, cool dance on the field. It was an upward Twitter joke to write. This is the most people have worn masks in Florida and months. Thanks to Bill for that one. And finally, I'm sure you and everybody has seen the GIF of the weekend running frantically and confusedly through that light-up maze. Yeah. Bob and his head around. Yeah, I saw some good ones for this.

Oh, there's so many. Me trying to follow the hostess to my table at the cheesecake factory. Me looking for the mute button when it's my turn to talk on the Zoom call. me trying to figure out where my $2,000 stimulus check is. And finally, I love this. Donald Trump Jr. After his convention speech last summer. Thanks to Patrick Horan, Michael G., King Chinook, Big Tea, and pickleball hero.

If you launched the next two Super Bowls worth of Twitter jokes, and congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Time for the notebook dump. And speaking of transactions, David, let us do a few media transactions that went down late last week. I texted you on Friday night and wrote, wow,

Lou Dobbs was canceled. And you wrote back to me, wait, literally canceled? Because he's kind of of already figuratively been canceled a billion times. Yes,

Lou Dobbs was literally canceled. His Fox Business Show, which I believe is called Lou Dobbs tonight. Isn't it funny with cable news how you know the name of the host, but you never quite sure what the name. It's like the Laura English.

Ingram Engram angle. The second one took me a couple more seconds to remember. Yeah. And it seems, and I think everybody refers to it by the name of the host, right? I mean, I'm not quite sure what the point. MSNBC is messing around some new weekend programming.

I was just sort of, I forgot what the names were, but I was just kind of having to chuckle over them when they announced them. I feel like just introduces to the person and put their name up top. You know, I don't need, I know this is odd for me to say. I don't need an elaborate pun.

Or even a good pun or a bad pun. You know, just call the show Hannity and move on. Probably not coincidentally, Dobbs' show was canceled after Smartmatic, the voting technology company filed a multi-billion dollar defamation suit, naming Dobbs, the aforementioned Janine Piro, and Maria Bartaromo. And to me, this is really Fox laying down a marker. You can say crazy things on Fox. No problem.

No problem. You just can't say crazy things that might get us sued. That's where we're drawing the line here. Well, I don't know if Fox Business has a different, you know, mission statement over there that would, that would, you know, make it more particular. If they're just trying to quarantine the crazy over onto one of the two networks,

you know, people reacted to this with a level of glee that I would not have expected and could hardly wrap my head around. Frankly, you know, I don't love it when people lose their jobs as a general rule, but I think it's hilarious, too. I mean, there's very... You'd like to make an exception in Lou Dobbs's case. Nobody can... Nobody combines just cruelty and buffoonery quite like loyal, quite like Dobbs. He's...

He's so... You know, I mean, we often go back and forth on whether or not people like... Sean Hannity or self-aware or self-conscious or anything like that. But the fact that we're having to question, that we have the conversation that we question that, I think actually gives a couple of points to the Sean Hannity's of the world. I don't think anybody thinks Lou Dobbs is self-aware. I think that he's just fully a jerk and fully an idiot.

And he's just so self-serious, right? I mean, he's just so earnest in his assholory. that it's, I don't know, it just felt, felt, but I also think that it's not, it's not just really particular to him. I felt like some of these, some of these victories that we have on either side for the, during, in this culture war, lots of people trying to get people fired all the time. And again, I'm not always a fan of them, but they feel, but so often it feels like there are people are in the trenches and it's a moral cause and it's, it's just so important to the future of the country. And then there's something like this for somebody, he did it, he got fired

presumably for doing a thing that he did not need to do that was just trying. I mean, it was an idiotic move by an idiot. And it's at a moment where the result of this is not actually affecting the future of our country in any way. So you can just sort of kick your feet up and have a consequences-free laugh about the whole thing. Yes, I completely agree. And that's what's so striking. you could go on for an hour every night and just be like Hillary Clinton, immigrant caravan, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, immigrant.

You just say almost anything on that show. And you would be uncancellable in the television sense of the word. And then, but you went to that place. I mean, he apparently according to the New York Times brought up the Hugo Chavez thing. And he was involved in the smartmatic thing. So like just going there. and then it was like, eh, sorry. We regret to inform you that Lou Dobbs tonight on Fox Businesses no more.

Well, it's an interesting, I'm sure there'll be a great story, you know, behind the scenes about it at some point in the not too distant future. But, I mean, it really, one thing that we know about Fox is that they at least like to give the appearance of having their talents back, even when, you know, they might not at the end of the day, right? They will send you off into the sunset with a, with a, you know, insistent lie that this was a long planned vacation. and then, you know, then you update the story later on. You know, they, they, or not. Yeah, no, no, yeah.

And then they just replace you. But this is, you know, this is interesting for the fact that, like, this lawsuit was sort of dropped at the moment that drop meeting filed at, like, the moment, like moments before or moments later, they fired Lou Dobbs. Now, it might not have been a result of the suit so much as maybe a result of Lou Dobbs intransigence or whatever, it just insistent that he wouldn't back down or that he wouldn't apologize or whatever the sort of baseline thing he had to do was,

uh, you, you could kind of intuit from his immediate anti-Fox, um, uh, moves on Twitter, uh, likes and retweets and whatnot that he was,

uh, you know, upset, um, in a very immediate way. Um, I would assume so. But it was,

I mean, it's kind of crazy to, and I think which really makes this story, a source of great joy. for so many people, is that people have been pointing at Fox News for decades and say, you know, they're lying, they're lying, they're lying. But there's nothing you can really do about that.

It almost feels like, and then, you know, Fox just like unleashes a new barrage of commercials talking about being fair and balanced or whatever else. And you feel like you're just, you know, they're kind of rubbing your nose in it. And now finally someone's just like, no, you lied a lot. And we're, this, and this wealthy company is going to file suit because you're damaging their bottom line.

and they just run scared. Like there's not even, there's no defense, you know, they're just like, yeah, we, we lie a whole bunch.

And it's not them, you know, obviously it's not just Fox News. The whole thing has just been sort of spectacular to watch. And here's the bad news for resistance Twitter, anybody who's allowing themselves too much glee. Fox hosts and Fox business hosts turn out to be pretty interchangeable and replaceable. Mm-hmm.

People forget this. The entire Fox News lineup has, has turned over. Remember Bill O'Reilly? Yeah. Remember, remember, like just everybody that was on that lineup

that's just gone and they're like, oh, I'll just do Tucker Carlson instead. Oh, let's lose combs and we'll just do Hannity. Let's, let's just, and they,

they've turned over the whole thing. Let's put, all the angrile, all the angst about the, about advertisers leaving and their big, their big primetime shows being left with mostly just like be real ads.

You know, I mean, just like, it's, they actually are replaceable. It turns out that if you just sort of, even if all these big name advertisers walk away, you're still doing fine.

It's sort of amazing. Yeah. And they've just continually replaced people. And they've just, it's not been a problem. It's just like, yeah, okay, find somebody else.

It'll be fine. Lou Dobbs's cancellation caused Donald Trump to issue a statement, David. One of the only, maybe the only thing he said since January, 20th, people did note that he did not criticize Fox in the statement. I don't know what that indicates about Donald Trump's future media plans, but I'll put that out there. Lou Dobbs has been at Fox Business as 2011.

And you and I are old enough to remember when him coming from CNN to Fox business was like a marker, a sign that things had not only changed, but kind of weren't going back to the old CNN as dominant days. You're like, oh, wow, what? he was such a Trump supporter that the New York Times notes that the president even patched in the television host during some policy discussions with his White House staff. So if you were in the White House, the voice you heard from the speakerphone was Lou Dobbs. Kind of amazing there. Then, David, we had two big moves at the New York Times.

Donald McNeil Jr., one of the Times as coronavirus reporting stars and someone who had gotten to the paper before you and I were even, born has left. Maxwell Taney and Lachlan Cartwright of the Daily Beast broke this story on January 28th, and I'll quote from in here, a kind of compressed version, quote, every summer over the past several years, the Times has selected some of its top reporters to serve as subject guides for high school students on trips to various locations around the world. Dot, dot, dot. In 2019, one of those experts was McNeil, dot, dot, dot. Many participants relate a series of troubling accusations to the paper, McNeil repeatedly made racist and sexist remarks throughout the trip, including according to two complaints, using the N-word.

The Times initially dealt with this internally and apparently let him off with the reprimand after the Daily Beast report, Times staffers pushback and now McNeil is gone from the paper. Oh, man. This story has been kind of, well, not hard to follow, but it's kind of kind of come out in chunks and it was it's a tough one you know i mean that this they're there i think the most generous way that you can look at generous to mcneal way that you can look at the story it seems like a tough call but but you know we're not we can't just say you know he was been working he's we can't cite his age you know as a as a as a defense and i think you could

you and i could do that if we're talking about a relative or you know uh due to lives down the block, but somebody who writes for the largest, most influential newspaper on the country. I mean, your boss is not legally able to cite your age in any sort of HR decision, right? So, I mean, even setting aside that, that little, I mean, that, that bit of legal ease, it's not, it's not an interesting distinction. He did, what he did even in the most generous way of looking at it, like I said, certainly seems fireable.

also goes to this whole point we've been talking about about the new power of employees in the newsroom. I mean, you read these stories and it's pretty clear that Times Management knew about this previously. They dealt with it internally, as they say, and they decided that this was not, this was an offense that was really bad, but something that could have, you know, was basically worth a reprimand. As soon as the Daily Beast report came out, staffers did not agree and made it very, very clear that. they didn't agree. And after that happened, McNeil is no longer at the paper. So I thought that was very an interesting chapter in that story.

McNeil in an email said, originally I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended. I now realize that it cannot. It is deeply offensive and hurtful. There was another move, too, at the New York Times, David, Andy Mills. He was a big figure in audio at the paper, worked on the daily and on caliphate.

Mills announced Friday that he had resigned, from the Times. Now, as you and I have talked about, some of the stories shared by the subject of Caliphate were shown to be shaky. In a very weird quirk of timing after the Times came clean about Caliphate, Mills then hosted an episode of the Daily,

according to the Washington Post, Eric Wemple, some public radio stations that carry the show did not like that. Former colleagues of Mills had also pointed out to his conduct before he came to the Times when he was at WNYC, Mills on his website admitted to a couple of things. He also added, quote, when my managers there confronted me with how my unprofessional behavior was making people feel, I was ashamed, I apologized to the individuals that I'd learned, I had upset or made uncomfortable, and I was punished. Mills ads, quote,

the allegations on Twitter quickly escalated to the point where my actual shortcomings and past mistakes were replaced with gross exaggerations and baseless claims, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know how much there is to say about that, but that was another big move of the times. Andy Mills no longer works for the paper. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. Last Monday's headline about the lack of Super Bowl tourism in Tampa was bucks, but not bucks. Today, David, we got a bonanza of strained pun super bowl headlines.

You sent me old man winner, old man winner, which ran in both the New York Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. The LA Times's headline was best of all Tom. Best of all Tom, of course, with a picture of Brady. The back page of the New York Daily News was Tampa Sleigh. Tampa Slay. Kind of generic. But David, there's one more very strained pun headline out there. It's from the Chicago Sun Times.

And the key word is goat. Okay. Goat, as in greatest of all time. What was the Chicago Sun Times as strange? pun headline. I kept waiting for somebody to do something with the pirate ship that I couldn't quite figure that out. Something with the um

treasure treasure chest kind of best of no no like the best of all like going at the boat the boat is it a rhyme uh no it's a pun sorry I mean

goat goat it actually substitutes for but it actually substitutes for boat in the in the pun real yeah uh pirates boat uh no no but goat is in the headline so goat oh pirate so it'd be like pirate goat uh um uh that's really strange co a boat boat boat he has a lot of titles. He has a boat. A boat. Oh, a boat load?

Yeah, so then the headline in the Chicago sometimes is. Goat load. Goat load. That sounds like something totally different. Goat load. Right, now I got to see this. That's fantastic. I mean, it's so bad. I tweeted it out on the press box feed if you want to look it up there.

And by the way, in further strain pun territory, our friend Rattie pointed this out, the front of the New York Daily News was the bleat goes on. The bleat goes on. So Tom Brady is the goat, but not goat in that sense, like goat is in the animal. And the animal goat bleats. So therefore, the bleat goes on.

Am I unpacking that correctly? That's so weird. I mean, I know we've been saying goat casually for a long time, but maybe it's just the old editor in me. looks at this this sports page uh am i i i just can't get over that like i know our copy desk would take issue with with using goat in all caps next to load in all caps without like putting periods between the letters of goat or something you have to differentiate those two things right david with a copy editing critique of the new york i just i just don't think when i think of

goat when i think of go i'm not thinking of what if i saw the word goat in lowercase it would not would not think, oh, LeBron James, oh, Muhammad Ali, you know, I mean, you think it's a negative connotation. So to get to bleat, you know, in the other way is just so bizarre. The bleat goes on. I'm not, I'm not missing something, am I? That's what it is, right? No, I'm sure that there's nothing else like you think. A goat bleats. I'm just trying to remember what my five-year-old daughter and I have been talking about lately. Goat bleats and other animals make different noises. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic is always by Erica Servantes. We're back Thursday with Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio,

who will help us understand the riddle that is Mitch McConnell. Plus more Luke Worm takes about the media. See you then, David. Later, Brian.