The Press Box - The Parkland Shooting Coverage, LeBron James Won't "Shut Up and Dribble," and New York Times Op-Ed Opinions | The Press Box (Ep. 430)

Episode Date: February 20, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss how the media, and the survivors, shaped the coverage of last week’s high school shooting in Parkland, Florida (02:00); Laura Ingraham vs. LeBron James (24:00); and the furor over the New York Times op-ed page (35:30). Check out Justin Charity's article "Contrarian Conflagration: The Fire and Fury of the New York Times Op-ed Page" here: https://t.co/0zox44pIEG Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, we're going to talk about the furor over the New York Times' abed page today. But first, I want to ask you, what's the most obnoxiously contrarian piece you could write on your beat? Wow. On my beat, my beat being professional wrestling. Yeah. One of my childhood idols, Jeff Jarrett, is going to be inducted in the WW Hall of Fame. And I think writing in support of him, if I'm judging by the Twitter reaction today is correct, writing in support of him would be incredibly, contrarian, surprise it to me. But honestly, I think the best answer to your question would be to write a piece saying

wrestlers shouldn't have health insurance and should continue to be freelance employees of WWE. I don't agree with that. But I could make that contrarian argument. Yeah, free market at work kind of thing. Yeah. I think mine would be a defensive barstool. The headline is something like we're all stooleys now, you know?

And I argue that we media lead us, right, are in danger of becoming too disconnected. And to be sure, Barstool's Rihanna piece was incredibly tasteless and then do kind of a mini list of atrocities, right, before returning to the thesis of the piece. I'm channeling my inner Brett Stevens here. That's, I think I would do it. We will offer more brain dead clickbait on the press box, which is part of the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast where you're not allowed to send thoughts and prayers to anybody. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer. If you want some recent content by us, you can find David Gacking with the starters.

Kirby on the mass man show and me writing about Australian NBA fandom this week. Stay tuned for that. But on today's show, David, first we'll talk about the way television and print and even the survivors shaped the horrific news of last week's high school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Second, Fox News host Laura Angram wants to carve out a space where LeBron James can't talk about politics, but Chuck Norris can. And finally, it would be an infuriatingly contrarian take to argue that the New York Times op-ed page is making people happy these days. We'll discuss why. As always, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But our first subject, David, no funny headline, no meta-media take that obscures the horror and terror of 17 people shot dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last Wednesday.

Let's just offer a few notes and impressions on the way in another mass shooting in the United States was covered. I was struck by Ryan Kiddell, who was a senior at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High, telling the Washington Post, I'm kind of surprised it happened here, but I'm not really shocked. And I think this happens now with such regularity that we're not only covering the gruesome facts of the individual shooting. We're also, every time one of these happens, the media is covering the fact that this keeps happening, right? Right. You know, it's like the Boston Globe cover from the 16th at a huge type. We know what will happen next. CNN's Wolf Blitzer saying, let's hope it stops, but clearly it won't.

Shep Smith listing off all the shootings since Columbine. Since Columbine in 1999, there have been. 25 fatal active school shooting incidents at elementary and high schools in America. Columbine was April the 20th, 1999, 13 fatalities in more than 20 wounded. Also in 99, Deming High School in New Mexico, Buell Elementary School in Michigan. In the year 2000, Lake Worth Community Middle School, where one was killed in Florida. In 2001, Santana High School in California. In 2001 Red Lion Junior High School.

In 2003, Rickori High School in Minnesota. In 2005, Red Lake High School in Minnesota. In 2005, Campbell County Comprehensive High School in Tennessee. In 2006, Essex Elementary School in Vermont. In 2006, Weston High School in Wisconsin. in 2006 West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania. In 2011, Millard South High School in Nebraska. In 2012, Chardon High School in Ohio.

In 2012, Sandy Creek Elementary School in Connecticut, where 26 elementary school students and others were killed. In 2013, Sparks Middle School in Nevada. in 2013 Arapaho High School in Arapaho, Colorado. In 2014, Reynolds High School in Oregon. In 2014, Marysville High School in Washington. In 2016, Independent High School in Arizona. In 2016, Townville Elementary School in North Carolina.

In 27, North Park Elementary School in California. In 2017, Freeman High School. in Washington in 2018 Marshall County High School just three weeks ago in Kentucky. And just and today Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida, in the town of Parkland where many students and teachers and administrators have died today, we do not yet know how many. The 25th fatal school shift school shooting since Columbine High School in America. Don't you get that sense that the coverage of every shooting now is about the fact that it's

part of this horrific legacy of shootings? Yeah. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, this sort of tragedy or this, the way that the media covers this sort of tragedy is the kind of, it's the best metaphor for how the media world has changed. Reporting of the news happens so frequently via social media, via social media, via, text message via, via,

you know, sort of partisan chat rooms, Facebook messaging, that sort of thing, that, you know, it's the role of just straight reportage, and don't get me wrong,

these major outlets are still doing it, but what we see them doing more, or spending more and more time on is the meta coverage, right? I mean, it's the story about how the story is being told. And, I mean,

it's sort of amazing. I think it's, I mean, in some ways, it's a positive step that, you know, old media is evolving to, you know, have a, have a place in new media, in the new media landscape. But at the same time, it's, it's a little bit disheartening that, you know, there's not, you know, there's not the same voice of God, I guess, that there used to be. There's not the same, you know, there's certainly no Walter Cronkites unless you want to get into, you know, certain sportscasters. And I guess we'll be touching on that. later on. Yeah, I think there's two reasons for that. One is that there have just been so many at this point, right, that you just at some point even, you know, whatever old flimsy wall existed

between, you know, dispassionate coverage and opinion eventually just gives way, right? I mean, the Wall Street Journal had a little video this week that was like 20 years of school shootings, right? And that's, you know, presented somewhat dispassionately, but there's no way you can watch that and think, oh, well, this is, you know, this is something that we can just let continue politically and shouldn't just care about, right? I mean, it pushes you in a certain direction. I think the other thing that's happened is, perversely, newspapers have gotten, you know, very skillful because they've covered so many of these at just doing this, right? I mean, I just, you know, you remember it was not that long ago that there was, you know, in the immediate aftermath, there was just so much crap on Twitter and so many fake things and all that stuff. obviously still exists in the world, but I look like the way the New York Times covered Las Vegas,

where they had that minute-by-minute recreation, you know, using people's cell phone videos and, you know, listening, you know, to the bullets and things like that. I mean, it was, it's just, it's just amazing. So I think the other, you know, part of it is that they've just gotten so good at that part of it, too, that then they move on to sort of look to do other things like the big editorial statement. In that sense, you're exactly right. I mean, and the, and the prevalence of this sort of story is depressing as can be, certainly hones a different set of skills for a reporter for a for a for a for a news company but there's a lot of different ways that we're seeing that the kind of firsthand news reporting gets out there in the world and part of what a

lot what what what the news media wrestles with is that they're getting you know competition from you know partisan outlets all the all the way down to you know high ranking politicians who have their own sort of quote unquote points of view on the story or counter narratives to what's going on But also they're competing with, you know, with actual like cell phone videos and, and, you know, firsthand, immediate firsthand accounts from the people who are there on the scene that are not being distributed by traditional outlets, right? Yeah. And let's talk about that for a second.

So Virginia Heffern wrote a really good column in Wired about what the students in Parkland did, you know, in the sort of in the aftermath of this. One is that she pointed out there's all these cell phone videos and Twitter. tweets and text messages right with loved ones that they were sharing that kind of, you know, at least tries to counteract the inevitable Alex Jones false flag bit, which I guess actually happened. But the other thing she said that was so interesting was to your point about, you know, moving us away from dispassionate coverage and toward calls for action is that they immediately

sort of pivot and start talking about, you know, the need for action. I thought there was one, you know, sort of fabulous speech by M. Gonzalez, who's a senior at the high school, calling out the media and Trump. If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I'm going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association. And I think when you hear those words, you know, right, all of a sudden it has this

amazing galvanizing effect that, you know, if the country or politicians, you know, we're sort of happy to sort of sit around and, you know, sort of, sort of, I don't know, come to grips with this and the way they did Vegas and everything else, you know, they are pushing the opposite direction. Yeah. And I think, you know, for all the good that the sort of meta analysis that the, that the old school media is doing, I mean, for all the good that is, I think that this shows, the Imigand-Daz speech in particular shows the real power of virality. You know, I mean, it's it's it's almost goes without saying but but you know there's no i guarantee there was no you know pro gun or you know conservative politician a national politician in america who was

who watched that speech for the first time and wasn't sitting on pins and needles hoping to god that their name wasn't mentioned you know because they they they they knew that that was going to get infinitely more attention than you know the immaculately composed new york times breakdown of gun violence in America. I think it's a, it's a, it's kind of amazing to kind of, I mean, as tragic, like I said, as the situation has been, that this sort of puts everything into such stark relief. Yeah, and then it comes from the voice of high schoolers, right? Uh-huh.

Not, you know, a New York Times op-ed column. It's not even the fabulous Dale Hansen back in Dallas, you know, who did one of his patented pieces where he just sits there and looks at the camera and talked about, gun violence. Another high school shooting yesterday, this one in Florida, 17 dead, the last report I saw. And everybody sends their thoughts and prayers again because that works so well. This is the 18th high school shooting in America this year, and we have 10 and a half months to go. We've had 290 since 2013. We average about one a week, but there's just nothing we can do. If there was a Muslim or a Mexican doing the shooting, how many new laws and how much money would we spend then to

stop the madness. But since it's almost always a white kid, there's just nothing we can do. America has 5% of the world's population, and yet 31% of the world's mass shootings. We're worried about people coming to this country. They should be worried about us going to theirs. CNN's having this big town hall next Wednesday about, this Wednesday about gun violence. And, you know, the fact that somebody like Marco Rubio has to go, right? He's sort of forced to go. I mean, that would have been the easiest thing to duck in the world and say, oh, I'm too busy, you know, working with the parents or doing, you know, doing whatever it is. But you suddenly have to go and, you know, be in this very public forum and be confronted about this stuff. Yeah.

I mean, you mentioned Dale Hansen. I want to talk about him just for a minute because I think that there's that, you know, in so much as all of this stuff is, you know, is sort of a stand-in for our, you know, the state of media in 2018. you know, we've probably, I'm sure, I know we've talked about Hansen before. Many people have covered Hansen's, I mean, usually very poignant missives, you know, over the years. And you wrote about this recently when you were talking about our, you know, the main NFL play-by-play guys being our sort of, you know, modern day Tom Brocaw's, because they're the only people that really speak to America and kind of and have the same platform, you know, that newscasters once had. And I do think that, you know, Dale Hanson is not Walter Cronkite, but in a certain sense, I mean, and again, you wrote about this, it's, it's, you know, in a lot of times the newscasters are the only people as divided as America, as politically divided as our country is. The newscasters are the only people who sit behind that desk that you engage with or interact with on a human level.

And I mean, and what I would mean by that is that like, it's like me, it's like talking to a stranger at the bar or something. something like that. Like you know them about, you know, you know them first talking about sports. And then when the, you know, political takes come, you can either forgive them or be surprised by them or whatever else. But it's, it's the way that we, you know, interact with, like I said, with strangers, with family members, with, with so much else. Whereas with newscasters and news outlets full stop, we're, you know, increasingly eager just to, just to, you know, hit the mute button before we hear word one. Yeah, I think it is the fact that it's a sports guy just always takes people by surprise,

also a sports guy in Texas. Yeah. Where we grew up, right, talking, you know, pretty bluntly about gun ownership. And, you know, he said on this last one, I'm, that somebody, the last time he said something about guns, somebody, you know, emailed him and said, I'm saving my last bullet to put it right between your eyes. Yeah. Last time I said, we need to find a way to stop a nut with a gun.

And that's all I said. get an email saying, I'm saving my last bullet to put it right between your eyes. Just another responsible gun owner in America. And I'm taking all bets. He's a white guy. So there's just nothing we can do. There was the kind of response he gets. A couple of other things on this that were sort of, I mean, one was the guy from the

onion who wrote the headline, no way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens with the onion, which the onion, I guess, just teased up every time there's a shooting, then came out on Twitter and said that this, he's the one who wrote the headline, but he had, this was actually applied, as he put it, to a high school, a mile from his house. So it's one of those times where, you know, black comedy sort of hits home. The other thing was 17-year-old David Hogg, who was the student in Parkland interviewing his classmates during the shooting. So right now we're in a school, an active shooter.

It's not a drill. And it's currently. Hello. It's 252. I heard one gunshot. We thought it was a drill initially, but it's not. Which is really phenomenal. Here, and his quote was, while I was in there, I thought, what impact have I had?

What will my story be if I die here? And the only thing I could think of was pull out my camera and try telling others. As a student journalist, as an aspiring journalist, that's all I could think. Get other people's stories on tape. If we all die, the camera survives. And that's how we get the message out there. but how we want change to be brought about. I mean, that is incredible.

Who thinks that when you're locked away trying not to get killed? I mean, that's just unbelievable to me. Yeah. I mean, the whole argument about shootings, I mean, the whole conversation about shootings is a sort of, you know, MC Escher drawing of like chicken and the egg questions. But you do wonder if it's like,

is this the gen? Is this indicative of the generation in general or is that the school shootings have become, you know, if not expected, then, you know, part of the going conversation enough that that sort of moment, that that's what occurs to you at that sort of moment. Yeah. Finally, there was Donald Trump who did not go before the cameras on Wednesday, though. His staff apparently urged him to, according to the times as Maggie Haberman. And then he didn't play golf this weekend in Florida because he's done at Mar-a-Lago as a tribute to the families, apparently, but did tweet a whole bunch and just came over. This was, you remember, you know, we have this like thing now on Twitter where every time there's a really bad Trump tweet, everybody says, I didn't know there was a bottom of the barrel lower than this. And then it's just like we keep repeating that.

But this one was how about how the FBI was to spending too much time trying to prove collusion with the Russians, right? so they didn't have time to follow up tips about the shooter. And that was just like, I don't even know what to say. But that was something. This is enough for a whole separate episode. Twitter is such a bizarre world in any kind of moment of heightened emotions like this. The Trump tweets are just sort of mind-boggling. this seems to be a, you know, a direct outcropping of his inability to play golf is just sort of befuddling in its own way.

I mean, there is an interesting, I mean, the interesting sort of story that's following out of this is that he apparently spent a good portion of that weekend asking people at Marilago whether or not he should support common sense gun control because he's, you know, he saw these students speaking on TV. Right. And they, you know, there's been some insinuation that they're open to some, to something. I mean, who will, I guess, you know, I'm going to take the Boston Globe position on this until we see something concrete. But it's something. I mean, it's a little something at this point. So the fate of the nation hangs on what people at Mara Lago told Trump that we should do about this? That's essentially where we are.

It's better than the fate of the nation, you know, hangs on what Fox & Friends says this morning. Probably so. But I do think it's where. I think the Twitter question really briefly, you know, you sent me an Andy Richter tweet, which was, you know, it said, you know, it said look at all these countries that don't have mentally ill people. The conversation obviously always comes back around to, you know, mental illness. It's not guns. It's mental illness.

Exactly. And, and, and this is, this is a, you know, a smart, but not, I mean, not particularly original tweet. I mean, we see, we see this sort of thing all the time, at least in the parts of Twitter that I frequent. But, you know, I think there is an interesting question as to just how much Twitter matters, you know, it's a great, I mean, at a time like this, it's a one. wonderful place to vent, you know. It's a wonderful place to like express your emotion in a way that you might, you know, an opportunity that might not have been available to someone in years past. But, you know, it's interesting to me the way that popular opinion has coalesced around the high school students. And obviously they're in a very particular position. But it shows the power

that these students have, but also I think is indicative of the. kind of dwindling power of just sort of social media partisanship. I just don't think it's effective in the, you know, for changing a lot of minds. And, and, um, I think we've, you know, the, the students this week, I think showed us what real political power can look like. Yeah, are certainly different. Uh, if you want more, by the way, on this, Pete Vernon over at Columbia Journalism review did a very good, uh, link rich roundup of stuff, which I relied on for the segment and which I would highly recommend. And all right, David, it's time for our overwork 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.

This week, I've got a special Australian runner-up via Bezo. I'll talk you through this, David. There's a politician here with the wonderfully Australian name of Barnaby Joyce. Wow. Okay. You with me so far? Uh-huh. Who he, Barnaby, had an affair and impregnated a staffer.

So here's where we are. There have been lots of calls for his resignation, which he has resisted. This is like the front page of the last. Australian papers every day over the last week. So the overworked Southern Hemisphere Twitter joke is, quote, Barnaby Joyce resigns to spend more time with his families. That's the Australian humor for you. Our runner up this week last week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 15 Russian nationals.

We went back to the oldie but goody overworked Twitter joke. Infrastructure Week is going great. That's via Uncle Nevin. Another runner up via DJ dashing, who notes that, who noted all the jokes about the athletic website, signing more baseball writers than MLB teams have players, which made me think we really need a whole new category for overworked Twitter jokes that are just about the athletic, right? This is sort of the congrats on your new job at Fusion tweet of 2018. Yes. The athletic signed somebody else. Kind of amazing.

But this week's winner from Joaquin Nagel via the Virges Sarah Jong. David, you might remember James DeMore who wrote the memo about Google's diversity policies and got fired and then sued Google. I remember him well, yeah. As the Verge, right, the Verge reported and many people reported that a letter from the U.S. National Labor Relations Board said that Google did not,

in fact, violate the labor law when they fired DeMore. Okay, well, everybody on Earth tweeted some parody of the old song, That's a Moray with new lyrics. So I think my favorite, I mean, honestly, there are so many of these, but I think my favorite was when you're fired from the team and turned into a meme, that's DeMore. Oh, well done. It's fantastic. Yeah, an overworked Twitter joke that's actually funny.

I love it. That's really good. There's several more, a couple of which I'm not going to repeat on a podcast, but I encourage you to read. All right, Dave, before we get to LeBron versus Laura Ingraham, let's take a quick break. Hey guys, this is Sean Fennessey, the editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and I want to tell you about a podcast I host called The Big Picture. Each week, I welcome a different filmmaker to talk about their latest movie and how it was made.

I've talked to the directors of some of my favorite movies, including Jordan Peel, Greta Gerwig, Ryan Johnson, Barry Jenkins, and dozens more. You can find new episodes on the Channel 33 feed every Friday by going to The Ringer.com backslash podcasts, or by subscribing to Channel 33 wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you'll check it out. our second segment David I call the Ingram anger

by the way before we even get into it be honest did you know that Laura Ingram show was called the Ingram angle were you aware of that totally unaware of it it sounds like like I would love to see what the other names on the whiteboard were for this because that was definitely like one of the first five and they went and they got to like 500 and kept crossing them off

because it turned out they were offensive or something like this was this is really shockingly bad name for a show The phrase stick to sports is mostly used ironically these days, but every so often you get a 100% pure organic stick to sports like the one issued by Ingram last week, who was so disappointed with LeBron James for making some fairly mild comments about Donald Trump to ESPN. She told him to, quote, Shut up and dribble. What was your first reaction as we get into this when you heard Ingram's bit?

Well, I mean, my first reaction was upon seeing head, lines and even reading articles about what Ingram said was just sort of like a mild eye roll, to be, I mean, to be totally honest. I thought that, I thought that, you know, this was, you know, this is not, not unexpected from, from Laura Ingraham. And, you know, as someone who's spent a lot of time filling in for Sean Hannity, I think that this is not, you know, just the subject matter, even on Fox News is not, not totally, uh, galling. Although when I listened to the, when I watched the video

finally, because I read, I admit, I read a lot about it before I watched the video. Watching the actual video, it honestly took my breath away. And I don't say that a lot. And I certainly don't use it lightly here. I think that there's a lot of craven race baiting in media

in general, but I'm generally reluctant to toss around accusations of racism when, you know, in a lot of those situations, this was really, really terrible. You know what the sentence that stuck out for me was? She plays the clip of LeBron talking to ESPN's carry champion, and she says,

Must they run their mouths like that? Who's they in that sentence? I don't know. There's a pronoun that's kind of drifting around out there. And, you know, when I heard that, I was just like, oh, my goodness. She called it the Jum Doc Alert, and it was really unclear if that was the built-in joke is that they were dumb so we're switching the consonants here. I don't, I mean, it was very, if that was the intention of the joke, if that was, if that was

deliberate, I mean, if it was accidental, then the joke rates itself. If it was deliberate, then I'm not quite sure how that, you know, jibes with her talking trash about Kevin Durant using run instead of ran at some point during the interview. I mean, it was just like really, really bizarre, man. If it was on purpose, that's like that joke, you make an email, you know, when you have a typo and then write back, I can't write good or I can't. can't write good or something, you know, and misspell words on purpose. Yeah.

That's that level of dead humor. I said, yeah, the ungrammatical. So she did mention as you say that like there takes were as she put it, ungrammatical. Which is kind of amazing because, you know, you know, do you know who's, do you know who tweets ungramatical things? The president of the United States. Yeah. By the way. Not to not to even, you know, dignify ungramatical as a thing.

But you know, if you're really, if you're really, if you're really, if you're you're really concerned about grammar. Maybe we should check out Trump's tweets. How about that? Yeah. Those are horrible word salad. Like I know exactly what LeBron and Kevin Durant are talking about. I don't know what he's talking about half the time.

First of all, let's stipulate right here that what she's talking about is a video of LeBron and Durant having a fairly deep, wide-ranging conversation in the backseat of a car with Carrie Champion driving. And occasionally directing the conversation, it was like a very, like, it was a pretty enthralling conversation in a positive way. Certainly more interesting than I was expecting to be when it first popped up and I, you know, click play out of a vague sense of obligation to my job at the ringer. I think what's most interesting about it, or, you know, not most interesting, but one of the kind of instances of just bad faith in the whole thing is that, This isn't a TV show, right? A lot of the times when we have these conversations,

you know, it comes back to this concept of the vague notion of power. And certainly LeBron and Kevin Durant are two of the most influential athletes in the world. But, you know, this is a YouTube video that I guarantee zero people in Laura Ingram's viewing audience had seen or would ever see had she not brought it to their show. attention. That's true. And that's very true. There's no institutional power in a YouTube video. You know, I mean, this is coming from someone who's talking from the platform of Fox News and to bring this up only for the sake of tearing it down. And it goes without, it goes without saying that the clips, all of the clips that she chose inherently, like deliberately diminished the argument that LeBron and

Durant were making, the various arguments that they were making. And to focus in on words, choice, which, like you said, could be applied to many other people, not least of whom is the president. You know, I mean, it's, it goes, I mean, it's just, she couldn't possibly be more obvious, you know, and the fact, just to bring, to bring it up in an episode where she talked about, you know, other subjects were like the Florida shooting and, and Steve Scalese talking about gun control. You know, what? I mean, it's, it's just, it's just so unnecessary. I mean, it's just, it's just so silly.

and she has since, by the way, released a video in which she insists that she was not being racist and that liberals and the media were out to get her, you know, in response to this,

which, you know, again, let's make it clear. Of course. She is the media and the thing that she was commenting on is not, you know,

by any, by, I mean, by the most strict definition, but to say that, I mean, her argument that was when she was saying shut up and dribble,

she was referencing a title of one of her old books and she's taken on left-wing celebrities in the past about coming out and making their political beliefs known, sort of saying just like basically her version of stick to sports, you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't, that doesn't disqualify you from racism, you know? I mean, if I, like, if you make the same joke over and over again

and then change the subject of the joke, the joke can become racist. You know, it's not, that's, that's, that, that is, that's not an impossibility, you know, it might not be your, it might not be what you did deliberately. But, you know, if I make fun of you for, I'm not even going to be. come with an example. If there are a lot of... Yeah, don't do the example. Don't do it.

It's problematic and it's not a defense. Right. Well, that was what was funny, right? Because she was talking about these other examples. So she's done this. I guess there was a Jimmy Kimmel version called Shut Up and Make Us Laugh. Yeah. And a Greg Popovich version called Shut Up and Coach. But you're right.

And when you talk about how nobody in the Fox viewing audience had, you know, knew about the LeBron Durant video, none of us who don't watch Fox, knew about this schick, by the way, right? So I did not know about the shut up and blank deal. And I completely agree with you. The context can change immediately. Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of, in terms of bad faith, the other part of the bad faith was, I don't think LeBron James has any right to talk about politics.

But then her subsequent tweet, as Jamel Hill pointed out, where she wants LeBron to come on her show. Yeah. You know, so I don't think you should, I don't think you should talk about politics. but if I could get a highly rated 20 minutes with you, I would absolutely take it to discuss politics and discuss Trump. So, you know, come on now. Also, Chris Long, who's really like I'm an amazing Twitter person, persona going out and tweeting picks of all the celebrities at Fox that had on,

like John Voight and stuff like that. And kid rock to talk politics, right? And it's like, well, you know, nobody complained when these guys were brought on to talk about stuff. also by the way did you Joel Anderson pointed this out on Twitter but the really maybe the best moment of this whole thing was when LeBron responded it all-star

weekend to this and just told everybody he didn't know who Lorraine was yeah speaking of not playing outside your inside your zone or whatever he's just like I just don't know who that is yeah that was funny yeah it was

this was just I mean listen when this happened when you know when this became a story last week I eagerly emailed you about it because this is as in our wheelhouse as anything, any subject could be. But man, I mean, the more time I spent with it, there's the worst I felt about the whole thing because it's just such a low point in modern discourse. I mean, just, wow. I mean, as great, LeBron and Kevin Durant compared to some of the athletes that will cover

on the show were, I mean, compared to the, like you said, compared to our president, LeBron was an elder statesman by any definition you know I mean like let's send him around the world and help negotiate treaties he was so impressive but it just the whole this whole thing was just like just deflating in a way but you know good for LeBron for standing up

you know I mean for taking the high ground a little bit but I mean and and you know at the end of the day I'm Laura Ingraham got a lot of attention for this for lebron and kevin durant and carry champion so you know that's what i think charles barclay was talking about right was that this is just trolling and that we're all falling this is this is when i think charles buckley was telling ernie johnson to stop talking about it ernie johnson was perhaps somewhat surprisingly calling the comments disgusting quote unquote uh but um barcly was saying like oh see this is you know this is what she wanted this was a throwaway segment

but this is what she wanted now we're all mad about this and she got a reaction from lebron and now we're all we're all taking the bait. I was kind of intrigued by some of the pro-Ingram defenses, the defending the indefensible one was from conservative radio host Mark Levin. That's how you say his name. He said whose tweet was, come on, smart guy. Let's see how smart you are to LeBron. That also seems kind of racist, by the way.

Let's see how smart you are. Okay. The other was from Bill O'Reilly. Because just for the fact that he was taking. up for on Twitter and it's at times like these that you remember that Bill O'Reilly is just a Twitter account now? Yeah. It's really funny. Like, oh, there's a Bill O'Reilly has responded in a tweet. To Barclay's comments, there's certainly a case to not giving attention to someone like Ingram when she does something like this. But, you know, I think that, and we've covered the subject repeatedly. I think that, you know, in current year,

it's never not the right time to shout down ostentatious racism. And while I understand what Berkeley was getting at, I think that's the red herring. You know, that's the distraction right now. Finally, David, we'll close the show by talking a little bit about the New York Times op-ed page, which our colleague Justin Charity in an excellent column last week, said, is now, quote,

hosting the most influential gallery of bigots and dipshits in the history of chartbeat. Can we just go over some of the things that have appeared on that page that have driven everyone to distraction? Please do. Brett Stevens defending Woody Allen without maybe writing about all the times that all the people who think Woody Allen is guilty. Barry Weiss tweeting about immigrants during the Winter Olympics. the hiring and the de-hiring of Quinn Norton, who slurs on Twitter and maintained a friendship with a white supremacist.

Also, this list could go on. Blackwater's Eric Prince calling for more mercenaries in Afghanistan. Ross Douth said saying Trump aide Stephen Miller should shape immigration policy, printing all the letters from Trump supporters on the editorial page. I'll start with you. What do you make of where we are right now in this strange moment in time with the New York Times op-ed page? It's really disappointing. And like you said, Charity's piece was great.

And we should say that a lot of the outrage of late has been both chronicled and news broken by Ashley Feinberg at the Huffington Post. She published some excerpts from internal chat logs, Slack chats, about employees just feeling totally abandoned by their editorial page. Now, listen, the point of the editorial page is not to reinforce any kind of. of necessarily pre-existing, you know, ethos or ideology. It should be to sort of challenge people. I mean, and listen, I mean, you can say what you want about David Brooks, but he, but his, you know, his place there for years did not reflect what the core readership of the New York Times was.

It's funny because this is, without avoiding answering the question for too much longer, what we're hearing about the New York Times now was what was applied to the Washington Post editorial page for some. so long that in the interest of being open-minded and, you know, not, not ideologically sheltered in some sort of like, you know, arch-liberal silo, they've managed to be directly offensive to all of their readership. Yeah. Let's stick on that for a second, because I think it open-minded is what everybody always says. And as somebody who is a product of the contrary and proving grounds of the new Republican slate, I just don't think pieces like this get assigned or writers like this get

hired out of open-mindedness. I think a lot of the times there's just this chic about defending the indefensible, right? Or if you're a liberal as the people who run these joints tend to be sort of throwing out a conservative ideal, you know, as chum into the water and watching how everybody reacts to it. And then, of course, everybody does react to it, you know, that I'm sure the Stevens and Weiss columns get huge amounts of traffic because people are outraged. And what happens is everybody, you know, it sort of becomes a traffic win, right? If nothing else. Yeah.

But I think, you know, I, I were just, I remember seeing pieces like this get assigned in, in the old days. And I just think it was always kind of like there was just kind of like, oh, wow, that's, you know, a crazy kind of terrible idea. But sure, you know, let's, let's throw it out there. I, you know, and so I don't, I don't, I don't know that it's, I don't really even know that it's open-mindedness. I think it's kind of like, you know, you sort of think that there are other things out there and you think there'll be a reaction gotten. I mean, what's funny about this too is that Slate and the New Republic, which used to be the homes for these kind of things, aren't doing them anymore, right? And so what the Times op-ed page and sort of, as you said, the post in another era are doing is this sort of contrarianism that's totally gone out of fashion. Yeah.

nobody, you know, nobody, you know, it's not, it's not really continued very much now, but they're sort of, they're doing, they've brought back the slate pitch as, as Charity pointed out in this piece. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that even call it contrarianism is, is almost giving it too much, is treating it too kindly. I think, you know, the two, two ideas that kind of come out of what you just said. One is that it's less contrarianism than it is just like, they're less contrarians than bad faith provocateurs, right? I mean, I think that it's hard to read a lot of these, a lot of, a lot of the op-ed columns and think and believe that the writers are arguing in good faith and are arguing a belief that they truly hold.

And I think that that's, that's, you know, symptomatic of the current state of the political sphere, you know, I mean, it's a waste of time to argue about whether or not Anne Coulter believes the things that she writes about or, you know, prattles on about. But on the New York Times, there's the expectation of gravity, you know, and I feel like to be writing in any sort of disingenuous way, you know, short of being, you know, paying homage to Jonathan Swift is acting in bad faith to your readership. But the other thing I think that's really interesting is that these writers, despite the fact that they are openly, you know, you know, many of them ideologically separate from or distinct from the core readership

of the New York Times are the most prominent faces of the New York Times, partially because, you know, their bylines are out there and getting past around, and partially because they're allowed to run their mouths on Twitter in a way that the average reporters are not. And I think that that's a sort of interesting point, I mean, an interesting position the Times finds itself in the modern world, and that the end of the, the, it's a, It's sort of like, even if you want to call them contrarians, its contrarian voices become its public faces. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, when you read the column on the web, literally their faces next to the column, right, in a way that Maggie Habermans or Jonathan Martins is not. I do think your point is right when you talk about it's not the, it's not the responsibility of the op-ed page to enforce this line of the paper, but there is this increasing dissonance, right, between what the Times news pages are doing and what their op-ed page is doing, right? The two things, the New York Times, the reason the New York Times has Mojo right now,

there's plenty of great things about the New York Times. I as a subscriber will tell you, there are two biggest points of mojo right now are what, unmasking Donald Trump and unmasking people like Harvey Weinstein, right? And to a certain extent, the op-ed pages are defending, you know, parts of the Trump program and, you know, arguing in Wyce's case that are reigning in the Me Too movement, right? So you do you have this sense where again, you can have both of those ideas under the same roof, but there is a dissonance there, you know, and to the extent people understand the times. I, you know, I'm my bigger, my big, I don't say bigger, but one of my problems with all the,

a lot of the columns that come up is they're just badly written. They're just not very good. You know, I think there was this thing during the election where never Trumpers got really overvalued because it was so amazing, you know, everybody thought was so amazing that conservatives were against Trump. So if you were a conservative who was writing against Trump from the, as Brett Stevens was, from a conservative institution like the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, you just became this giant star. And then I read, you know, his columns and I'm like, these aren't very good, these aren't good sentences. This is just not, this is not, this is not, you know, in the case that Woody Allen column,

like, this is not argued. in a complete or good or, you know, interesting way. And I just like, I just don't get it. I'm just, I don't, I don't think like Ross, Ross, that's really, really talented writer. Ross also, I think, believes every, just about everything he writes, and one can believe everything he writes.

Yeah. I didn't like his Stephen Miller column because I didn't think his heart was really in it. But I just want to read Brett Stevens, I'm just like, I'm not, I'm not getting any value here. I don't know what it is. And, you know, if he's, he's doing. the anti-Trump takes, but there's all, the page is already full of those, right? Yeah.

So what are we left with? Well, we're left with, you know, going against identity politics and defending Woody and all and stuff. It's like, eh, what's, I don't, I don't get what that really gives you at the end of the day. I think, I think that's exactly, that's exactly right. The never Trump thing, I mean, you can see the evidence of the point you just made. If you look at MSNBC who hired, you know, 20 never Trumpers immediately surrounding and following the election and then immediately could, after.

that could not figure out what to do with any of them. The luster wore off really quickly. But Ross Douth, it's, you know, I'm glad that you brought him up because someone tweeted last week when he published a certain attempt to break the internet. I don't think it was much of a success with a piece about banning porn saying that it was time to, you know, for America to ban porn. And someone, you know, put that side by side with his mealy mouth take on whether or not it was feasible to ban guns or to enact any kind of gun control in America.

and you use the phrase in reference to another thing, his heart wasn't in it. I think what's really hard about being a right-wing agitator in a non-right-wing periodical is that it's really hard to get your heart into anything. When you find, you know, I mean, we all know the, I mean, you and I and anyone in the business listening to this knows the reaction you can get from your editor when you write something good, but they know it's not going to do crazy traffic, right? They never say it out. They never say it out loud,

but there's some sort of sort of editorial sigh, you know, that goes, that you receive back. And you feel this when you look at, when you look at like Brett Stevens, Uvra here, I mean,

it's that he would, we should say, because we started off the show talking about, you know, a mass shooting and gun violence in general, that he's written now twice in favor of repealing the Second Amendment

altogether. Now, it's hard to know, honestly, whether or not that is like a really deep level troll job or if he means it, you know, if he honestly means it, it seems, you know, by his public appearances and his Twitter account that he does indeed mean it. I think he means it, sure.

But it's, but, you know, but in the great power of that argument comes from a, you know, a conservative person making the case. But, you know, but I mentioned Jonathan Swift earlier. This calendar year, he wrote a piece called a modest, a modest, immigration proposal colon ban jews you know which is not i mean which is clearly satire um and but i think that and i don't think mean i don't think the use of satire discounts any argument that someone makes far from it but i but i do think that you see that the you see that his heart's not in a lot of this when he's defending or you know when he's writing about devon newness it's just sort of

he he gets his energy up a little bit or not defending when he's when he's writing about the lack of substance to Devin Nunes and his revelations. You know, he gets his dander up a little bit. But, you know, constantly going back to, like, ideas like Woody Allen, even though it's relevant in the modern moment, you know, going when these writers talking about, you know, social justice warriors and campus, God, you just saw talking about just like, like campus, like this, the liberalization of the American university. I mean, this is just, it's like, you know, could you, could you, could you, could you, could you

find any more boring straw men to go after it's it's just it's just frustrating i think the um i think that what you mentioned too about the the editor sighing for a you know smart and sensible but low traffic article like the traffic the traffic stuff is sort of fascinating because i think you know i don't know that this you know for every column this goes through everybody's mind but there's like there's sort of two ways to win with an op-ed style column right one is the ultra righteous denunciation of trump right um or or or you know or you know pick if you're on the other side of line i guess the other way but some some sort of ultra righteous denunciation of somebody hit it out of the park and the other way is a column that's just abjectly terrible and you know it sort of defends the indefensible right

because it'll just be hate red and hate tweeted like crazy so i think you know it's sort of like now that we're in this you know in the old days 15 20 years it's like oh there's a you know there's a gail really nice funny gail colin's column that you know is sensible and has some good jokes in it and and there we go. And I think now just in the economy of the web, you know, that that's, that has got to shape the decisions people make sometimes, right? Because you just know what kind of reaction you're going to get from every,

every little op-ed call. Without a doubt. I mean, and again, I don't, I mean, it doesn't, not every conversation about media has to be a conversation about, you know, how you interact with your audience or being, you know, being faithful to your audience, you know, this is, these are, these are op-eds. That's fine. But yeah, you're right.

I mean, people like Gail Collins, you know, they can be very smart writers. One of the most central purposes they serve is a very antiquated, you know, service of being a dependable voice in your readerships, you know, kitchen at your readership's kitchen table. It's that sort of, you know, there's a comfort aspect to it. And if you're going out of your way to sort of raise the ire of your core readership, I think that it does raise a question about what your audience is. if you're going for, you know, the endless world of clicks beyond your core readership, I think that's, I think that's an interesting conversation for a periodical to have.

It's also, before we get too far from it, worth noting that I would, I think it's fair to say far in a way, the most significant thing published in the New York Times opinion pages over the past six months or year was Lupido writing about her personal experience with Harvey Weinstein, which, you know, doesn't directly relate to a lot of the writers we're talking about, but it does show that there is a way to be deeply significant and to also break news and to also be personal and not craven in the process. You know, I mean, there is a, there is another way forward and the New York Times has shown us evidence of that themselves.

Yeah. Though that's, it sits a one-off, right? Because it feels like that ran there because where else would it run? Yeah, no, that's true. You know, in the paper, right? You know, like a tab, a paper that was much more shameful. in the New York Times, we'll just put that on the cover. You know, that's on the, that's on A1, right?

Here we go. You know, like the, the Daily News. It might have, it might have started on the cover on the print edition. I don't know when it, when it actually ran, but that's like, to me, that's sort of parked there because I don't know where else you put it in the New York Times. The, by the way, you hit on an interesting question there, which is why are they doing this? Is I think interesting, right? There's some sense of this is like the Trump safaris, right? That, you know, there's just kind of, you know, we're, you know, self-flageal

of we miss something about Trump, our institution, you know, in some way, didn't see this coming and didn't understand it. And we've got to do a better job of understanding of which, you know, then leads, you know, not for the, not just for the times or for lots of papers to do these Trump safari pieces, right? You know, we're going to go, we're going to go endlessly talk to the voters. Some of it, I think is, you know, getting traffic and getting attention. I, you know, I think some of it, you know, people have people have. People often accuse them of trying to go after like conservative subscribers or Breitbart, you know, readers or something like that. I just, I can't imagine that.

I can't quite imagine them. Maybe they're doing it to, you know, your New York City conservative or something like that. But I just can't imagine that you really think you're going to move the needle in that direction by running, you know, Eric Prince on on mercenaries. I just, I don't, I don't, I don't see the connection between those two things, but maybe that's part of the idea, too. Yeah, I mean, part of its volume. They're just looking to fill up space in an interesting and contrarian way, but I think that ends up being sort of part of the problem. And, you know, we haven't really touched on Twitter. I mean, I mentioned, you know, these writers being the sort of like forward, the forward facing personas of the New York Times.

But, you know, that's another issue of volume. It's just like, I don't think, I think that there are times when, like, Bari Weiss is a great example where she can make some good points and she makes some good tweets, but I find it really hard to believe, going back to my earlier point, that she's writing in good faith almost ever in column form. But I think that that's, that would almost be forgiven as an intellectual exercise if she weren't making just whack tweets correlating immigration in the Olympics for no reason at all. And then like, you know, overtly lying about the context, I mean, about the substance of her tweets after she deletes them.

it's just an overall it's just a really weird bad look for the New York Times yeah that was weird that was one of those whole I think I saw this going around a little bit you know how to if you if you do a bad tweet here's what you do yeah that was the here's what you don't do version you know which is just insist you were talking about something else yes

misinterpreted the I'd also bid direct people to Jack Schaefer wrote a piece several months ago called the New York Times op-ed page is not your safe space and I'd maybe disagree with Jack's overall take a little bit he does have some wonderfully interesting history, which is that the New York Times op-ed page, which comes into being in the early 70s, was always about this kind of provocation. You know, back then they were looking for pieces from the leader of the John Birch Society and H.L. Hunt, the very, very crazy Texas oil man who was kind of his own press.

They asked, tried to get Curtis LaMay to write about, you know, what the Air Force should do in Vietnam. And they got Spiro Agnew to write an opinion piece before the formal op-ed page got started as Jack writes. So, you know, that that's kind of, you know, it's in one of those, and I'm not sure that it does not forgive them or anything, but I think that's in a way that that's kind of always what this has been about, right? It's been a home for people like Tom Friedman and, you know, Brooks and and Marine Dowd and people like that, but it's also an Anthony Lewis going back, but it's also been, you know, the home, that the other stuff on it has often been, you know, chumming the water and red meat, right? And so,

stuff that is designed to provoke on a good day and designed to just do it mindlessly enrage on a bad day, something like that. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Just one weird, like, I mean, I don't know if there's anything in this, but it occurs to me that we talk about how politically divided our country's become, that there is sort of like, at least from, you know, the way I read online, especially in Twitter and other social media, it does feel like there's just sort of like this third path. of just arch-contrarianism that is taken off.

And I think it's sort of embodied by a week or two ago, Glenn Greenwald sort of positively tweeting about the New York Times hiring Brett Stevens and Bari Weiss. There's sort of like everybody that's, everybody that's like defiantly anti-partisan, I think, contrapartisan. I don't really know. I mean, just fighting against whatever mainstream they're swimming with

just as now they're now part of their own little political denomination. I think this is something to keep an eye on. Yeah, that's, you know, he's, his Greenwald's politics are so sort of strange and fascinating. And he's, you know, been one of the biggest critics of the page, right? And he's another guy, though I'm not sure he could, you know, would want to write in 800 word chunks. But he's another guy who would be fascinating on that page, right? Yeah. Just because he's so heterodox and because he so, he believes everything that he says, you know,

or believes 99.9% of the things he writes, right? I don't think, I don't think Glenn is trolling all that much. And that would be, that'd be really fascinating. We will bring back our own brand of shameless contrarianism next week on the press box, David. Until then, see you later. All right. See you soon, man. We're not going to do segment four Fergie's National Anthem.

No, okay. Let's go. We're going to save that one for the watch. I'll talk to you next week, buddy. Making just tweets.