The Press Box - 'The Press Box’ — Hedging for the Future (Ep. 373)

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker get together to discuss how a Sports Illustrated writer predicted the 2017 World Series champions three years prior (01:00), how the Harvey Weinstein scandal has become a media scandal (22:30), and Papa John's taking on the NFL's protesters (38:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Wanted to make sure you're listening to the Bill Simmons podcast this year. We stepped it up with the guests. I don't even have time to list all of them, but let's just say we have had a who's who of A-listers, A-minus listers, B-plus listers in sports, pop culture, movies, music. I mean, where else can we get Kevin Durant, Steve Ballmer, Jimmy Iivine, and Charlie Staren in the span of six weeks, nowhere. The answer is nowhere. You can find that literally nowhere other than the Bill Simmons podcast. We are in year 11.

It's been an honor to do it. I hope you subscribe. The Bill Simmons podcast. Check it out. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Brian? Yes, David? Sports Illustrated has been getting a lot of credit

over the past 24 hours and the past several weeks for predicting the 2017 Astros Win in the World Series. In honor of that, I would like to make a prediction. Ooh, let's have it. My prediction is that the goal. Golden State Warriors will win the 2018 NBA Championship. And let me give you one more prediction. I would like to predict that the Golden State Warriors will not win the 2018 NBA Championship.

And Jim, can you just edit one of those out in like seven months? You got it. You know what's like I had my greatest bold, fake, bold prediction moment ever? 1995. I'm filling out an NCAA tournament bracket. All right. I did not actually submit it. I like just for my own private use filled it out.

And I either got the final four, which I can recite from memory, UCLA, Arkansas, Oki State, and UNC. Right. That's big countries, Oki State, by the way. Or I convinced myself I did. This is one where I'm like teenagers right. And I don't know what the equivalent of dining out as a teenager is, but I dined out on getting that final four right for like five years. I'd just remind people, hey, you know, I correctly called the 1995 Final Four. And by reminding people as a teenager that I had gotten a sports prediction right,

but not reminding them of any of the numerous sports predictions I got wrong, a.k. every other Final Four bracket. David, that was the moment I truly became a sports writer. Congratulations. We should have seen it coming from there. This is the press box on the ringer podcast network. The press box is where we talk about the media. I'm Brian Curtis. Ringer editor at Largey is ravishing David Shoemaker,

Ringer Art Director, writer, man about town. Your beard has really grown in since last time I saw you. Yeah, it's coming on like a storm here. You look like you could be the Astros number one starter or play third base for the Dodgers. That's really what I'm going for. David, today we're going to talk about three topics. Number one, a Sports Illustrated writer turns into the amazing Kreskin. Number two, how the Harvey Weinstein scandal has become a media scandal as much as a Hollywood scandal.

And finally, the epic battle that America has been waiting for, Papa John, singular versus the NFL protesters. I can't wait. I mean, really. Plus the overworked Twitter joke of the week, which we always do here on the press box podcast. But number one, David, you've achieved a certain level of sports writerly power when the Astros win their first World Series in 55 years and during the climactic call, Joe Buck mentions you. Here's a ground ball right side could do it.

The Houston Astros are world champion. I'm in franchise history. And the Sports Illustrated cover in 2014 and the article by Benzeman. Ben Reader. They nailed it. The June 30th, 2014 edition of SI, published a story by Ben Ryder, with a picture of George Springer on the cover and the headline, Your 2017 World Series champs. Well, guess what? The Astros won. It's amazing. It's really amazing. And SI and Ben are taking an enormous victory lap because they had the only sports prediction that has ever come true in the history of sports writing. Well, listen, there's a lot of different sorts of sports predictions out there.

We live in a world where half of ESPN and Fox Sports TV is first take style programming, right? And this is an hour every day of nonstop takes, nonstop predictions. And, you know, I mean, there's credit is, people are, people are justifiably reluctant to hand out too much credit to those sorts of talking heads. You know, there's also the sort of just machine of takes surrounding the NFL draft, the NBA draft, when players are coming up, this guy's a sure thing. I was actually Googling around us to try to find the most galling takes of all time, and most of them can be attributed not to sports writers per se, or not to, you know, just like everyday columnist, but people like Mel Kuiper, who said things like, you know, DeMarcus Russell is going to walk in and fix the Raiders, or all of the people that, you know, proclaimed that Todd Morinovich was the next big thing. That's a sort of different sort of sports take. The Raiders quarterback prospect is its own category. Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, when you get into the nuts and bolts of this Sports Illustrated cover story, and like you said, they've been taking quite a victory lap. It's been a fairly low-key victory lap. I mean, there hasn't been a whole lot of gloating involved because what you immediately get into is not some sort of crystal ball gazing. But it's a, you know, Sports Illustrated has written the piece about how this magazine cover story came to be. And you can't really call it anything except a totally unshocking window into the pedestrian world of sports journalism. Well, I think part of it right is that it was on paper.

Yes. It was not, if it had been just said on first take, we would already forgotten. Nobody remembers anything that's on television. But if it's on, it is a physical magazine. Yeah. That sort of adds to the awesomeness of the prediction, right? And then the other thing I think is this was at the beginning of the tanking era of sports. Yes.

And that's really key to this because now tanking slash process is such a thing. And they had come off or in the midst of three straight hundred lost seasons. Yes. They were getting 0.0 ratings in Houston. Yeah. And nobody was watching the Astros. Mm-hmm. And, you know, now I think if SI did a couple of,

cover story this week saying, trust the process, Philly. The 76ers are going to be the 2020 NBA champions. I don't think anybody would think that that was such a huge prediction, right? That would definitely be hot takey, but that would, you wouldn't be like, oh, oh, how dare they? They're out on a limb this time. Yeah, that's totally true. And listen, there've been a million magazine cover stories, you know, in the sports world over the years that are sort of like, for some reason, I have a crystal clear picture in my head of

the Jason Kid Nets when they were first assembled. and somebody, whether it was S.I. or Slam or whoever it was at the time, said, you know, this is the future of the NBA or something in that effect. But, like, there's a difference between this is the future and the 2017 World Series champions. Put a number on it.

Yeah, I mean, listen. And George Springer, by the way, we should have won the MVP of the World Series. Yes. He tied the all-time World Series record with five home runs, and he was on the cover. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, it was a really impressive.

bit of prognostication, don't get me wrong. But the, you know, the titling, the actual cover itself was, yeah, was just a little bit of trolling from the SI editorial office, right? Sure. And also, it's, yeah, provocative trolling, sure. And also, I think, kind of, I mean, first of all, if you've ever known how magazine covers or magazine headlines are written, talk about, you know, how the sausages made, you know, that there's very little time actually devoted to these things.

It's not workshop for days and days and days usually. And it's like, hey, that sounds funny. That'll make people kind of vaguely angry. Yeah. I think it did. It was one of the first things, you know, in mainstream media. I'm sure there was some NBA version that actually said like tanking is a good idea. Sure.

Seemed to say that you can tank and piss off your fans and subject them to terrible baseball in this case. And that seemed that was a big deal at the time. Because as writer has known in a couple interviews he's done about people were really mad at him for this cover. it was like, oh, that's terrible. Yeah. How dare you, how dare you, you know, countenance this kind of team building? Yeah, I mean, if you want to, I mean, look at the sausage-making particulars in this case. It's, I mean, he says, I think, in his, you know, when he, in an interview or in the SIP's,

Ben Wright, or in the SIPs that he wrote about it, that this wasn't meant to be a cover story. But then the level of access that he got kind of, you know, vaulted it above the other things that were in that issue. and it, you know, sort of justified being the lead. And then they sort of had to find the hook after that. And they settled on 2017, not arbitrarily. There was a lot of evidence that Houston was sort of aiming towards, you know, this period of time vaguely. That's when they would be good. Right.

But if everything went to plan, according to plan. But, you know, anointing them the World Series champions was just a pure bit of editorial hocus pocus. another funny part of the background of this is the Sports Illustrated cover is always wrong and or a jinx. The jinks, yeah. The jinks. And then, yeah, and they used to, when we were kids, they used to do the Dr. Z thing of, you know, like he would predict the Super Bowl winner. That one year they had, sorry, Buffalo. Dr. Z thinks the bills are going to win the Super Bowl.

And then they get crushed by the Cowboys. Like, that was a running joke that the Sports Illustrated cover was always wrong. So it's kind of like Susan Lucci winning the Emmy or whatever, right? Sports Illustrated did it. Yeah, we got one. Well, I do think, you know, we're sitting here in a media entrenched, from a media entrenched vantage point, right? But this and this and. That's what you'd like to call it.

Yeah. And the, you know, the spheres of Twitter that we travel in, workslack, so, you know, whatever else. This cover has been being passed around for the entire playoffs, right? I mean, this has been, it's not like someone just noticed this at game six or something. This has been being discussed and sort of became in some ways the narrative of the entire playoffs. at least from the Houston side, right? I feel like from a media point of view, there's an element of this to which it is sort of,

we're excited that print journalism gets this sort of valedictory, right? This sort of victory lap for, you know, printed magazines as more and more of them are disappearing. Absolutely. And as like, you know, in an online only world, like is just like with first takes. There's no shortage of takes. There's no, you know, if you want, it wouldn't be hard to find, I'm sure if someone looked back at the ringer in five years,

we probably made a prediction that would have seemed really, you know, similarly as bold with one of our attention grabbing headlines. But it's just, it's more meaningful, especially to us who've been in the media for a while, that, you know, dead tree media, that, you know, this dead tree media got it right. It's the same way we get excited when people put, this is tomorrow's sports page on Twitter. Yes. Saw Randy Harvey, the Houston Chronicle, do that last night.

And everybody's like, oh, awesome. Look at this. Yeah. Still a value of a sports page. Yeah. Yeah. It's like there's a little bit of the dead tree, the dead tree. And I'm as guilty as anybody that a romanticism of it.

There was one SIP piece that I'm going to have to try to quote off the top of my head, but that people are selling this issue of Sports Illustrated on eBay for like there was some that were upwards of like $300, $30. So fake. I don't believe that. Uh-huh. I don't believe that. I don't believe someone listed it at that. Exactly.

There was someone listed it. But there were many of them listed for $100. but SI just sort of like plaintively pointed out at the end of the piece that you could still buy that issue from them. And you could buy like a framed edition for $70 or something like that. It's an instant collector's item. It is. I was like what things are proclaimed collector's items. Because it's just never an actual collector's item.

That's happened to me. Someone brought that up to me the other day. We were, someone's talking about old Disney VHS tapes. Those things that just seem to sort of you get, you buy Aladdin when you're, you know, a kid or whatever. and it just stays in your possession forever. And if you go online or go on eBay, you can find this tape listed for $500 and you think you're rich and then realize there's other ones listed for $5.

Some idiot tried to get $500. Yeah, there's a, that sort of tomfoolery on eBay is a real thing. Yeah. I saw this, I was rifling through stuff in my mom's house the other day, and there was a moon landing collectible thing. And it literally said collector's item. Yes. So like if you're proclaiming it's a collector's item,

it's probably not actually a collector's item. As a comic book nerd, that was, you know, the cause of the whole market collapse back in my childhood, too. I love sports writer predictions. This has entertained me ever since I was a kid, and back speaking of Dead Trees, back in the newspaper era, at all these writers that I just, you know, NFL beat writer, college football writers that I loved. And then on Friday, the newspaper would do the cruelest thing, which was they'd make them pick the games. Remember, put all their little headshots in a row. And you'd look at their season record, and it was always like 30%. And you're like, oh, wait a second.

That guy whom I admire, who writes great stories, who breaks news, doesn't have any more idea what's going to happen in this game by having spent all week at team headquarters than I do reading his stuff. And it's the thing that's like it's always so revelatory about sports artists is like, we don't know what's going to happen. We have no clue. And there's no connection between knowing what's going to happen in the games and being a good writer. Just like in politics, all these people, how could we have not seen Trump? coming. Well, you know, it turns out that's not, you don't always know these things. Exactly. Like, this is not, this is necessarily your job to be able to predict the future. Being in the room doesn't make you a seer. And, you know, in 2017 more so than any other time,

it's, we all have access to so much information. But what this proves is, if, just from a purely career standpoint, you should probably just make predictions all the time. Exactly. And take tons of credit when you get it right and just never again mention the ones you got wrong. I wouldn't give a shout out in the midst of all this to, you know, maybe a nominal loser in the, in the 2017 Houston World Series prediction wars. And that pat on the back goes to Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle, who wrote the response to that Sports Illustrated cover story and was quoted far and wide saying, quote, that it was, quote, more of an attention grabbing, perhaps even tongue-in-cheek projection than a prediction. And he wasn't wrong at the time. He was totally right. And yet that quote is in like 75% of the pieces about this cover story.

So we had to find an enemy here. We had to find somebody the bad guy of the story. No, yeah. Jerome Solomon is doing God's work here. So, you know, kudos to him. It's funny. I think about Ben Ryder. And he has said this in an interview to Business Insider.

This will be the defining thing of his career. He could write Frank Sinatra has a cold tomorrow. Yeah. And people say, oh, that's the guy who got the prediction about the Astros right. Exactly. In a way, this is like kind of your least memorable or less memorable piece, but just the called shot of it will make it the most fundamental thing he'll has ever done in his career. Yeah, absolutely true.

I mean, there's just no way. That's like it will carry him around forever. And if you're him, why fight it? Because, you know, how, yeah, well, you know, I did get the prediction right. I heard him saying, by the way, in a couple interviews, but he was on CNN talking about this, this is how big this is. He was like, you know, I do. I have to give all credit to the management and the players, the Astros.

So thank you, yes. You know, your prediction did not itself will the Astros to a title. I thought you had to clarify that. It's great. He's on CNN. You said Joe Buck used it in his game winning call. ESPN this morning was running with it, which is, you know, it's not like there's a bunch of ill ill will between ESPN and SI, but there's, you know, that's slightly unusual that they would

be jumping on it too. And yeah, I mean, it's just, I guess you're right. The worst thing that he could do is, you know, complain that this is what he's going to be remembered for. Oh, no. This is the wrong time for him to be tweeting out his links to his favorite best written stories, you know, he should bask in this. This is the sort of moment that every sports writer should want. And also that when it happens to you to acknowledge the inanity of the whole thing. Absolutely, there you go. That's the right tone. By the way, before we let the World Series get away, Can I just congratulations to everyone who once again, I saw this from CNN's Brian Lowry, brought up the argument that baseball games go too late. Oh, and the World Series is going to lose fans.

We had the incredible Game 5, 13, 12 classic, which lasted like five hours. And people like, oh, you know, there were some kids that were asleep on the East Coast when that we just stopped this argument already. Yeah. I mean, we have a fantastic World Series, an amazing game for Game 5, which everyone will remember forever. or at least I will. And we're worried about children on the East Coast who are asleep. You don't have sports memories before you're like third grade that are that vivid. You remember just like random images and stuff.

But really, this is meant to be enjoyed by older children and adults. Let's just put it that way. And I think this has actually gotten worse. This is one of the oldest arguments. One of the play a World Series day game. This is like the, I think in the on-demand world we live in. Yeah. People are, you know, sports are supposed to be quote-unquote,

DVR proof, but the dark side of that is people are like, why can't I watch the World Series climactic extra ending showdown when I want to? Yeah. And I have to go to bed now. Yeah. Like that, it's actually the argument has actually gotten worse. People are so spoiled. Maybe I'm an old timer, but I loved that feeling that everybody I knew was watching, even

non-sports fans were watching this thing at the same time. It's like, it's a moment that like only the, you know, the Oscars can sort of, you know, can replicate that like every or the Super Bowl or whatever but everybody's watching this thing and and you know let it go let it I mean that would that game have been better if they change baseball like a five inning game you know of course not you know I mean it's like making it shorter and and when they say that what are they talking about just like trimming around the edges like less time between pitches or whatever it's it's just sort of like cry out into the abyss at this point you know it's just seems to I would go the other way let's make things longer you know like

the Kentucky Derby. I mean, that could be like, that should be 15 or 20 minutes. You know, just let those horses keep going. Just make everything longer.

Yeah, I think John Thorne, who's the historian of baseball once told me, it's like every, no great baseball game is ever too long. Yeah.

And no terrible game is ever too short, you know, right? It's like, that's the thing. And by the way, David, speaking of communal experiences.

Okay. In which all of America sits together. It's time for the overwork Twitter joke of the week. Yeah. Got some honorable mentions this week.

This is a big week. It's been a huge week. We've been, been like off for like nine days. So here we go. So I got to do some ketchup. Honorable mention number one to anyone who made a pun featuring you Darvish's name during the World Series.

Old takes exposed head. Houston, you have a problem. And then when he began to struggle in game three, Houston, you don't have a problem. Who. I did think there was what funny. You got to believe. You got to relieve when he got into trouble on the mound. The you pun.

is like maybe the oldest and dumbest and most offensive. I went to his first start at Arlington in 2012. No joke, a Rangers fan, a North Texas resident, their way at an attempt at cultural route outreach. This is the guy's first major league start, right? It was to hold up a sign that said,

quote, we love you long time. It's pretty offensive, right? And by the way, pretty offensive. And the Rangers put that on the scoreboard, on the Jumbotron during the game. All right.

Honorable mention number two. And the Dodgers, Jock Peterson, hit the ninth inning home run in game four in the World Series. He touches on plate and yells, you like that, you like that? Congrats to everyone who compared that to Kirk Cousins. You like that? Yeah. That was a thank you for making the analogy. Yes.

Nice overworked Twitter joke. But here is the champ. October 25th, okay? Skip Bayless tweets, no rookie in sports history has had a higher degree of difficulty than Lanzo ball, thanks to his father. Okay. Kind of a sweeping statement. Right. Right. There are ways to attack this.

Everybody went to Jackie Robinson, a tougher rookie season in 1947. Wow. Here is a necessarily partial list of people who invoke Jackie Robinson. Alana Rizzo of SportsNet, L.A., former Rangers second baseman Michael Young. Okay. Seth Davis. Ian Fitzsimmons of ESPN Radio. The sporting news is David Steele.

Somebody named Real Kent Murphy. somebody named Baseball King, somebody named MLB Jesus, not familiar with that account, Roland Martin, the Rick Riley, who at least listed other trailblazers with other sports, and Kent State's recruiting coordinator, Derek Simmons. I would like to think that America has this unbelievable level of cultural sports historical literacy that we all went to Jackie Robinson. Sure. First, you know, we all climbed on that same moral high ground, but did it possible we saw a Jackie Robinson tweet and then did our own Jackie Robinson tweeted everybody's mind just go right there at the same

time. Is it necessary to bring like, you know, history? Like when Tanaasi Coates takes to Twitter to correct the chief of staff of the White House over a series of tweets, I understand the historical significance of this. Is it necessary to respond to, are there people that are reading Skip Bayless tweets and taking them at face value and like memorizing that fact forever to tell their children? I don't, I don't think that's a sort of whole thread. Yeah, exactly. I don't think it's, I don't think it's necessary to, to correct Skip in real time.

Yeah, but that's a winner on Twitter. And they all, I mean, all of these got huge likes, retweets, everything. I mean, you cashed in. So congratulations. I've worked toward a joke. If you invoke Jackie Robinson to countering Skip Bayless tweet. By the way, Skip Bayliss once said that Tim Tebow would lead the Jets into the playoffs, talking about sports prediction. So I don't, I don't think it's necessary to correct him every time he says something. Topic number two. So Harvey Weinstein's, scandal, David, going on and on and on. Here is what's interesting over the last week and change is that what started out as a Hollywood

scandal and still to some extent is with Kevin Spacey and Brett Ratner, et cetera, et cetera, has become also a media scandal. Here's a, here's speaking of necessarily partialists, some people who've been caught up in various allegations, Mark Halperin, co-author of the Game Change books, Leon Weaseltyer, former literary editor of the New Republic. Hampton Fish, who was the current publisher of the New Republic, Michael Oreskes, sort of the definition of a Washington fixture. He was the Bureau Chief of the New York Times, Washington Bureau Chief now was senior vice president of news at NPR, Fox's Lockhart Steel, Matt Taibi, for what he said were fictional

passages contained in a book about his time editing a newspaper in Russia. Why do we think this has sort of turned and become about media in the same way it was about Hollywood? You know, there's a lot of reasons. I think the most immediate one, at least, you know, to me is that this is a sort of national story, a big story, you know, just when it's about Hollywood. But it becomes almost necessarily a very personal story for the people who are reporting on it. you know, we, we live in a, you know, in an, I mean, if you want to put a positive spin on the Harvey Weinstein scandal, it's that people became aware that they're, that, that, that it's okay to voice these tragedies, to give voice to, to, to, you know, the dark side of the Hollywood industry. and then when, you know, the writers or the people who are spending their time, you know, with these stories all around them, reckon with them, then, yeah.

I mean, it becomes a personal story and you look out, you look to the world immediately around you, and you say that, like, this is a problem that affects our lives, too. Mm-hmm. No, I think that's right. I think also just, like, it's probably like the media is a lot more like Hollywood than And we and the media who, you know, mostly idealize our jobs, like our work environments, again, most of us would want to believe. Yeah. You know, but it says, the New Republic was something of a boys club.

I guess what everything was and still is, unfortunately, something of a boys club. Sure. In media, right? These old institutions, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing is interesting here, too, is you start to see. So the original New York Times story about Harvey Weinstein opens these four. floodgates that you said, as you said, spreads out to other mediums, other media, other industries.

But then you have journalists using the power of journalism against other journalists, right? Journalists are really good about ferreting out facts and finding things. Harvey Weinstein was really tough to get. Then he was like, you know, getting Mark Halperin and finding people who worked at ABC News and worked with him at other places. Yeah. They're really good at that. You know, they're like, they're expert at that. I was like, really this woman, Mary Louise Kelly interviewed.

from NPR interviewed NPR CEO this week. And she talked a lot about like, you know, what did you know and when did you know it? Sure. And you gave this great interview and you're like, oh, this is what journalists are really good at. It's finding facts, even when they're unpleasant facts about their own industry. There have been a lot of questions about the timeline of when NPR knew what. So what I'd love to do is start there and just tick through my understanding of events as they unfolded. And please jump in and stop me if this or something that doesn't square with events.

as you understand them. So in 2015, NPR staffer Rebecca Hersher, alleged that Oreskes made her deeply uncomfortable at a three-hour dinner and that he asked personal and invasive questions. She complained and Oreskes was reprimanded that same year 2015, correct? That's correct. A year later, October 2016, NPR learned about a woman complaining of harassment by Oreskes at the New York Times nearly two decades ago. This complaint involved physical contact. She says he kissed her. he forced his tongue into her mouth, correct? That's what we heard. And that would have been, I think, in the fall of 16.

One of the, you know, interesting things that came out after the New York Times and New Yorker pieces about Harvey Weinstein was the sort of, I mean, love it or hated. There was a sort of automatic shaming of NBC news for not running Ronan Farrow's piece as, you know, on their platform. But also just media members shaming. the media at large for their complicity in this, for people being aware of it, but not running the story before now. And I'm not sure. Which happened, by the way, we should say on MSNBC's air, right, with Maddow asking. Yes. Why did you end up reporting this story for the New Yorker and not for

NBC News? Look, you would have to ask NBC and NBC executives about the details of that story. I'm not going to comment on any news organization's story that they, you know, did or didn't run. I will say that over many years, many news organizations have circled this story and faced a great deal of pressure in doing so. I think that, you know, what that did was sort of make people, make, you know, journalists immediately start prosecuting, obviously in a non-legal sense, these crimes in their own world or wherever they could see them, because they realized, one, the urgency of the issue, but two, that it's not. okay to stand silently by and wait for the New York Times to break this in 10 years. Absolutely. That was at the heart of the NPR thing, and I think it's been at the heart of the New Republic thing.

I was an intern of the New Republic in 2000. I did not know that Leon Weaselty was engaged in this kind of behavior. But those guys who I worked with are now, you know, the prominent voices in a lot of places. And, you know, there was a certain sense of when are these guys going to say something? about this guy that they worked with in some cases for more than a decade and whether they knew or what they perceived and all this kind of stuff. And then there was also this kind of defensive action. I think maybe this is specific to the new republic of people saying, well, there's a lot of people that just hated Weaseltyer. Yeah. Hated the magazine. Hated the ideas. And like, this should not invalidate the ideas of the magazine because this was his behavior. And it's like to a certain extent I'm sympathetic to that. On the other hand, Leon was, you know, was a. moral figure.

Like that was his whole, that was part of his schick. Yeah. I mean, like literally in person he's to wear these cowboy boots and there'd be guns and roses music coming out of his office.

He was this weird combination of like the kind of like moral figure plus the kind of nerd rock star. Yeah. Those things like half Lionel Trilling and half Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park. You know, like that was his kind of like

the main of Leon. And, you know, I don't, I mean, invalidate piece by piece. I don't know what you, how you would even

and police something like that, but like, yeah, it does call into a lot of question a lot of the things he wrote if this is the way he was conducting himself. I mean, absolutely. It does. There's certainly a lot of sort of lionization of old media icons like Leon, like, you know, and determinedly old media icons in his case. People who, who embrace that mantle sort of. And I think in a, you know, to zoom out a little bit, there's a lot of the, you know, more serious problems, be they sexual harassment or worse, are sort of lumped in with the bigger notion of, I mean, the book on, I mean, I didn't work at the New Republic. I don't, we've had two or three conversations about Leon Weaseltyer over the years, but, you know, I don't

have any inside information, but the book on him is that he was a blowhard or he was a dick or he was, you know, just a, he, but, or more generously, a larger than life personality that, you know, know, that would be the nice way to put it. And a lot of the, and a lot of the darker sides, I mean, and not just for him, for everybody else, sort of get lumped in into this, like, he's a larger in life personality. This is part of what you get. And you got that, and you heard that all the time with Harvey Weinstein, right, with people trying to explain why they didn't say anything.

You know, when Matt Damon or George Clooney were trying to explain or, you know, Quentin Tarantino or Kevin Smith, it's all this sort of like, yeah, well, you know, we knew Harvey had a reputation. We knew Harvey was this, you know, Harvey was an insufferable person in a lot of ways. Or was a cad, but not harasser or abuser. That was something you heard with Harvey. And with Leon, by the way. Yeah. Oh, I knew he was a cat. I knew he was, you know, he talked in a certain way, but I didn't realize the impact that was had. I think that it's, I think that, you know, we're under no obligation to assume the worst about anyone. but I think if confronted with any sort of, you know, damning information, it's important to not to not lump the crimes in with the persona.

There was the Mark Halpern's co-author of the game change book, John Heilman, was quiet for a few days and came out in a New York Times story the other day and talked about it. I hated this as him talking, quote, I had never heard of been exposed to or had any inkling of the notion that he had engaged in any behavior that we'd be described. in even the broadest sense of being sexual harassment or assault. The bare nature of the accusations are horrific and shocking and terrible. These behaviors are not the behaviors that I witness. They're not consistent with the person, et cetera, et cetera.

But I just read that and I was like, these were in the New York Times, as John Holloman said. But is that human speech? Is that something you say off the cuff or something you write down on a piece of paper? I just don't believe that is human. That does not sound like human speech to me. I'm sorry. No, I mean, in all of these, in all of these, you know, statements. that have been put out by those accused and those around them.

It's just it's a, you know, thoroughly doctored, you know, and I understand. You know, whatever. I understand you want to be careful, but that does not to me sound like somebody who's reckoning with it. The other thing, so a couple other reasons has become a media scandal. One is Chadenfreude, you know, which runs in media as strong as does in Hollywood. You can you can understand that Mark Halpern is accused of all these horrific things.

And on the other hand, you saw a lot of on Twitter people being happy at his demise, period, because they didn't like him because he was a dick, as you said, or people thought he was a dick. Another reason is that we saw this with Drew McGarry's long May I Call Upon Deadspin the other day. You can have written things that are not, while there's not maybe sexual harassment or some of these other things that are just insensitive, demeaning, whatever, toward women. Sure. Especially in the old unpoliced days of the internet. Yeah. And then, you know, they come back to find you or you, you know, feel bad about them in light, I think in Drew's case, in recent events. And so, you know, there are a lot of people who about whom that is probably true.

Mm-hmm. When you grow up blogging or tweeting or whatever. We see this with every Twitter scandal. Yeah. So there's that, too, I think. That sort of naturally transitions to a media thing. Yeah. I think that's exactly right.

And then, I mean, it's not, you know, not to, by all means, take exception to any of the, you know, any of the real serious problems that have been, that have come to light through all this. But there was a piece, I think, on New York Magazine's website about how the shitty media men list was becoming weaponized. And, you know, that list that had been passed around amongst women in media, obviously is leaked out in various forms. I believe the whole thing was posted online, you know, last week.

And then, you know, like literal enemies of the people on the list were outing them as being, as being on it. And so I think there's also the very, like, human drive on the journalistic side to when news exists to beat your, you know, beat your competition to publish it. The thing I thought was interesting. I saw Jody Kanner, who was half of the reporting team that broke the original Weinstein story, make this point. But, like, she was talking about Halper. And I think also you could say the same thing about Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly to head to this gallery. But these are the people that shaped our opinions of Hillary Clinton.

Yeah. We're talking about Hillary just wrote her book. were talking about her and the way she was treated by lots of people by Donald Trump, but also by the media. And it's just like, oh, these are the people who were, you know, creating our impression of Hillary were people who were carrying on like this, allegedly, in their private life. And the Zolads wrote a great piece for the ringer about how, on the Harvey Weinstein side, about how people like Weinstein were the people who were the gatekeepers for the actress.

that we saw for, you know, our entire lives. And so it's a, it's a parallel argument that these, that the, that the, this sort of, you know, honestly, like disgusting people are the people who are, who, who, who, who gatekeep in a lot of ways our impressions or the national impression of, of, of, of people like Hillary and, and women as, you know, as a whole. As, absolutely, Ezra Klein called out this out in a piece. So this is a 2007 column by Marring Dowd, not a fan of Hillary either in the New York Times. This is not somebody who was learning to blog.

She quoted Leon Weaselterre. This is his quote about Hillary. She's like some, quote, like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won't stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president. Just leave me alone. One, he said that in 2007. Two, she printed that in a column in the New York Times. I mean, that's unbelievable. Unbelievable, maybe the wrong word.

that's incredible that that happened in 2007. I mean, even not knowing what we know about Leon Weaselty, that's incredible that that happened. And it's like that was, that was okay. That was a star columnist at our most prestigious newspaper. But that was an okay way to describe Hillary Clinton. Well, I think that's sort of the crux of the problem, right? As this phenomenon has moved into media, it's a broader awakening that we that, you know, the media world is just as problematic as the other ones, and we have to be

self-aware about these things, you know, if you look at all, every time an old movie comes out about, you know, whatever newsroom in the 60s or 70s, it's, you know, I mean, the, the, the protrude, that we glorify, you know, the golden age of newspapers or whatever, but, you know, the roles of women, and there's like, the, the roles of women in those films are very limited. When they were left out. Yeah. Because they were limited at the time. And a lot of the people who were in charge still have this sort of, that.

view of the workplace. All right, before we move on to topic number three, let's take a quick break. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Wanted to make sure you were listening to all of our sports podcasts on the Ringer podcast network like The Ringer MLB show hosted by Ben Lindberg and Michael Bauman, who know more about baseball than anyone. I know. What about the Ringer NFL show?

Kevin Clark, Robert Mays, Tate Frazier, Mike Lombardi. Multiple podcasts coming up as the season approaches. The Ringer NBA show, Chris Vernon. Kevin O'Connor, Chris Ryan. A whole bunch of the ringer staffers. Yeah, I know it's the offseason, but it's coming back. The Masked Man Show with David Shoemaker. It is the best wrestling podcast on the Internet's.

Listen to our Ringer podcast. Don't forget about mine, the BS podcast with Bill Simmons. All of them you can find in the Ringer Podcast Network. Top of number three, David. Papa John versus the NFL protesters. Here's some quotes from John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John. Quote, the NFL has hurt us. We are disappointed the NFL and its leadership did not resolve this, he said, referring to the protests.

Leadership starts at the top, and this is an example of poor leadership. And he also said the issue should have been nipped in the bud. Papa John's stock was down 8.5%. This also started a larger pizza war. Greg Creed, CEO of Yum Brands. Love that name, which owns Pizza Hut. came back and said, we're not seeing any impact from the NFL protests. So Papa John has decided that this is why he's not selling pizza

because somebody took a knee during the National Anthem to protest police violence. Yeah. That's funny, isn't it? I can't, even if you were firmly convicted that this was the case, and by you, I'm referring to Papa. You were referring to Papa. I just call him Papa. I can't you must see that taking this stand in public is just as bad for your brand as whatever damage the kneeling would have done.

I think he's, and I'm borrowing this observation from Colin Coward this morning, I think he's saying that he is the official pizza of the silent majority. I think that's the play. I think his business is damaged enough that he's like trying the kind of pseudo-trumpian thing of like, I'm going to, I'm going to the base. Right. Like I got to carve out, I got to carve out 308% of Americans that are just going to stick with me. So I'm going to be the anti-protest pizza guy. I just don't understand the logic between, I mean, I think that you're absolutely right. I don't understand the logic for him that people who are outraged by pregame kneeling are going to in turn take that out on the pizza company by like the corny dude who does commercials with Peyton Man. or, you know, the commercials, or, you know, rapping Jerry Jones.

I don't, I don't, I'm not, I find it hard to imagine that people are really, that people are blaming Pizza Hut because of their sponsorship, uh, to the tune of, you know, whatever percent drop in pizza sales. Yeah. Are we sure that rapping Jerry Jones didn't cause the decline in Papa John's business? When I'm a cowboy stadium or sitting at home and I hear Papa John's pizza for Jerry Jones, you know, it lights me up like a Roman candle with toppings and flavor almost too good to handle. That would make me not want to order Papa John's.

I should stipulate that I grew up prior to living in Texas and meeting you. I grew up for most of my youth in Louisville, Kentucky, when Papa John's pizza was a mere fledgling operation. That's where it was based. A gleam in Papa's eye. Yeah, I had Papa John's pizza, you know, a couple times a month, were most of my formative years. Was he like delivering it to your house himself at that point? Was that how small was?

It was already, it already, you know, felt like a real operation. I just don't think it was a national one in that point. But it was, I mean, I love Papa John's pizza. I got to admit, I haven't had it in a long time. I mean, I don't eat a lot of delivery pizza, but when I do. I don't often eat delivery pizza. I did have Pizza Hut last week. So I don't, I've had that very recently.

I'll just put it that way, pizza hut. Yeah, they have a nice app. Domino's has a great app. For some reason, when you're out here in Los Angeles, I don't know, I don't know if, I assume there are Papa Johns, but those seem much more accessible. Can we take issue at this moment with the pizza rankings compiled recently by the Deadspin staff, an article by David Roth? Oh, man. So they went Domino's, one through five, Dominoes, Sabaro, Little Caesars, Papa John's Pizza Hut. I feel that's just upside down. Yeah.

I feel that's like saying the Astros are going to win the 2017 World Series. I feel that's purposely provocative. Yes, absolutely. Domino's. First of all, what is Sabro doing on that list? It's not a delivery pizza. I mean, it seems like a separate sort of thing. It just like something you're forced to eat in a subway or at the airport.

Yeah. I mean, if you're making... It's like, oh shit, I don't have any food. Most of the people, I'm assuming who had votes in this are living in New York City where there are, I mean, our time in New York City, I think, aside from our very early years of like, you know, sitting on the floor of a two small apartment and watching wrestling pay-per-views and ordering, you know, like three extra-larges and just destroying them. Most of it, when you live in New York City, you're eating New York City street pizza, right?

You're walking in the pizza shop, you get a buy. I barely ever, I mean, almost never would order pizza because you just get enough pizza in your day-to-day life that you're never, like, yearning for it. Absolutely. And then let alone the, you know, the last five years of New York's existence when, you know, specialty pizza, fancy pizza took over. Right, but these are rankings about cheap pizza. Cheap pizza, okay, and not New York Street pizza.

I think that, okay, Domino's, Domino's certainly takes the cake for the most variety of opinions. There was, you know, a lot of people can pin down a timeline of the stretch in which Domino's was bad, but they were good before that, and now they've gotten good again, but people are stuck at certain points in history. So, like, it's, you know. Domino's is like fast food to me, where it's like, Remember when Burger King was good?

Yes. You know, people are like that. And then you think, well, wait, was it ever good? Or was I just a different human? Exactly. That's Domino's to me. It's hard to think about without understanding a time in your life. I, in right now, and maybe it's because, you know, my palate has changed.

I would put, you know, dominoes and Pizza Hut sort of just in a parallel category. A lot of it depends on the shop you're ordering it from, but it's comfort food. It's like that certain style of pizza that you use. grew up with. Maybe it's better. Maybe there's cheese in the crust now. You know, maybe there's like fancy dessert options. But I get it when I want that reminder of, of the comfort of ordering pizza as a kid. I felt when Papa Johns went national, when it stopped just being something for the shoemaker house, making something for America. Everybody was like, well made, you know, like it had been clearly the cheese had been put in the right place in the toppings

on like Domino's, which sometimes felt like you made with a blindfold. Well made, but cold. was the kind of thing. You get it, and it would be just a little cold. Remember that? Yeah. Just not quite as hot as you wanted. But that garlic dipping sauce

and the little peppercini peppers. Oh, that was a big deal at the time. Yeah, I would always try to order more and it was very, very difficult even if you offered money to get extra peppers. That was, oh yeah, you had to, because you were trying to tell them that over the phone. Yeah.

They were just really busy. You know, there may be not a computer button to push for extra peppers. Yeah. By the way, the whole thing with Papa, is this thing we've seen with ESP and the NFL, which is something happens economically or with TV ratings. Now let me,

let us all gold rush in to blame the thing we already were mad at. Yeah. To opportunistically blame what we were already mad at for the decline. I like this take. Go on. Yeah. So the NFL ratings are down. I, this is, I'm just some person in the universe, didn't, don't like Colin Kaepernick. Therefore, Colin Kaepernick forced the NFL.

ratings down. Yes. Or I could say the same thing with concussions, right? I'm worried about head injuries. Therefore, head injuries make the NFL or ESPN's too liberal. Yeah. Therefore, their knee-jerk liberalism made people stop buying cable television. Right.

You're like, oh, okay. And I feel that's what this is. My pizza business is down. Therefore, I kind of may, let's assume Papa is generally anti-PAPA may not be as woke as some people think, right? So therefore, I'm against a protest, therefore I'm going to blame them. Yeah, no, I totally agree. Although the logical end of that argument is that, you know, that, you know, people blame all this stuff on the drop in ratings. Ratings just across the border going down.

If you want to take, you know, the yum CEO at face value, pizza delivery numbers across the border not going down. It's specific to Papa John. So, you know, your guess is as good as mine as to why their numbers are dipping. slightly. Is it, ooh, no pun intended, by the way, with Papa John's. And did you, is this, don't you realize this is one of the fields of American life, we have no idea earthly understanding of is why certain pizza brands should sell at a lower clip at various times?

I mean, how could you even begin to explain that, even if you were just like to put a theory out there? Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just, the whole thing is mind boggling. Because, you know, did he, did Papa John say this in an interview? It was on a stock call or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's usually the time in which you just obfuscate, you know?

I mean, you make up a reason. You pick a reason and you just insist upon it. Though we weirdly also hear from CEOs. We don't hear from them a lot. And then we hear from them and that. Yeah. So they wind up answering, like, they sometimes come out with a bizarre answer in that forum that we just never hear. Yeah.

I mean, if we had Papa right here, I'm sure we'd hear all kinds of theories about American politics, don't you think? Yeah. But it's funny to say we don't hear from the CEOs that much. I mean, Papa John himself is in, you know, many of their current. commercials. So, I mean, he is the public face and not just, you know, and not just some big wig sitting in an office. Is he available for, is he on the watch this week? Is he available for Ringer podcast generally? Should we reach out to Papa John to see if he wants to decline comment for this podcast? The Bill Simmons interview? Yeah. I'd love that. I'd love that. One more thing before we go.

So Bob McNair, owner of the Texans in a Wicker sham Van Nata ESPN joint this week. Wow. Said, we can't have inmates running the prison. I just want to note the irony here that there were, there were a lot of people, well, a handful of people on Twitter who were really mad when Michael Ben of the Seahawks invoked the Dred Scott case the other day and said, oh, what a terrible analogy when he was talking about the owners, not letting the players or not giving the players freedom of expression. They were really, really uptight about that analogy. Yeah.

Were you not then, but some of those people kind of disappeared when the owner of the team, not a player, not labor, but management. Yeah. Compared his workforce to prisoners to any. inmates who by definition do not have freedoms. So I'd just like to note that that was the outrage. If you were outraged at Michael Bennett, you should have probably also been outraged

in an owner who was calling his multi-millionaire athletes prisoners. Yeah. Whatever Bob McNair tried to explain his way out of that. Just what a weird. What a weird quote, a weird like mealy mouth walking it back or backpedaling on the whole thing. This is what I'm saying about getting billionaires on the record. Yeah.

They have, Jerry Jones is a living, is living proof of this. They have wildly eccentric viewpoints. And as soon as you hear them talk, in this case, thanks to the ESPN duo's sources, they say really crazy things. I mean, that's just, this is what happens. Yeah. I mean, like you said, kudos to Wickersham and Van Natta for, for getting that quote. I have to assume they knew that they had something really significant when they, when they typed that out. For sure.

But it wasn't like this thing exists in a vacuum where all the NFL, all the other owners were just like, you know, either in agreement or just that's McNair being McNair or whatever. I mean, there was, according to the report, there was like dissension in the room. I mean, there was reaction to the room and that he got into an argument. You know, I mean, like this was, this was at the time acknowledged to be an insane thing to say. Absolutely. Even by the standards of an NFL owner's meeting, which is a pretty high standard. That's a press box this week

How about we go to find a pizza buffet and get some lunch? Let's do it, man. So you can get some meat lovers action in your life. We should start ranking pizza places on Twitter. They do little videos. Let's do that. Maybe someone else is done that.

That's good content. We are overworked Twitter joke of the week. I'm Brian Curtis. He's David Chewaker. See you next week on the press box. Were you upset that Deadspin didn't rank Chick-fil-A's waffle fries as number one pizza? Because that's even worse.

Awesome. Awesome.