The Press Box - The Reopening of America, a ’90s Dennis Rodman, and the Lysol Presidency | The Press Box

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

After months of quarantine, Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker touch on what it would look like to reopen America (2:00). Then, they discuss the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (22:22), 'The Last Dance' and the iconic ’90s figure that is Dennis Rodman (25:12), President Trump's suggestion to chug Lysol as coronavirus cure, (46:20), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network that we are launching this week. It's called TV concierge. It's only available on Spotify. These are 12 to 15-minute mini-podcast that review the latest TV shows streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, FX, Apple TV, wherever else. We'll preview new shows that are launching. We'll break down the biggest shows that just launched. We'll review the biggest binge-watch seasons that drop as they happen. On Monday, We're launching three of these, all mini pods. You can listen to one. You can listen to all three. It's up to you. It's our new TV concierge podcast from the Ringer podcast network. Think of it like a little bit of a playlist. Pick and choose the ones you want to listen to.

It's available only on Spotify. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. We got lots and lots of great stuff to get to today. In honor of the latest episode of The Last Dance documentary, We'll explore Dennis Rodman as a 90s media figure. How differently would he be covered by the sports writers of today? We'll talk about Donald Trump and Lysol. What else can we say?

Well, we'll try. Plus, David guesses the Strain Punt headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, I want to start with the reopening of America. On Friday and again today, we had a handful of states, kind of unbelievably, return to a state of someone. what normal life, restaurants are open, barbershops are open, gyms, nail salons. I want to try and backburner our knee-jerk, lefty political reactions just for a second. Because you may not approve of this happening, but these scenes, I think, are kind of interesting

because this is what all of America is eventually going to look like when and if we come back online and I kind of want to get our reactions to what it's going to feel like to enter a reopened America. Let me first take you, David, to Fairbanks, Alaska. And the Roundup Steakhouse and Saloon. Very nice wood paneled looking restaurant there, according to the New York Times photograph. The Roundup Steakhouse is open for dine-in. You have to make a reservation so that they can control the crowds. You just can't just walk in, but you can't eat in the restaurant. Do you want to know what fast, casual

dining is like in the age of coronavirus? Please, yes, tell me. The bartender is going to wear a mask because at the Roundup Steakhouse, the Times report, she was wearing a mask made from the cloth wrapper of a bottle of Crown Royal Whiskey. That seems about right.

Another bar owner in town says he's got a 40-foot long bar, but he can only have four patrons at a time because they've all got to be 10 feet apart. So, you know, when we used to go out back in the old days and we'd love it when you'd get lucky and the seat on either side of us would be open. So you have a little more elbow room. Guess what?

There's going to be nine seats that are open next to you now. And we're shouting at each other from four or five seats away, I guess. Yeah, I think that's the idea. People in Fairbanks, that is the customers, wear a mask into the restaurant. They keep it on when the server comes to the table to take the order. and then the server brings the food and then you take your mask off to eat the food. Now, I don't know if you put it back on

when the server comes over and says, is everything okay? Can I get you a refill on that Diet Coke? But I guess I want to ask you, let's say it's not some of these governors who we might think are rushing into reopening the economy. Let's say it's Gavin Newsom or Andrew Cuomo who gave the All Clear.

Would you feel comfortable eating inside this restaurant under these conditions? No, absolutely not. I don't even know, this is so far away from my current state of mind, I don't even know what the criteria were. I would have to think about this for a while. But it's sort of like, I mean, we've talked about what we want to do the most. We've talked about going to eat it at, you know,

this sort of chain, fast casual chain restaurant. I desperately want to. But I just can't even, I mean, there's a part of me that can't even imagine. imagine doing it. Part of my dream of going to the local Texas Roadhouse or TGI Fridays or whatever is going there safely. You know, not with like a preponderance. So we're all doing the best we can under the conditions. The dream is going there with nothing to worry about. Yeah. I mean, every time I see a picture of food from one of these restaurants, like if you showed me the the queso dip from chilies or something like that or, you know, particularly,

good looking chicken sandwich. I'd be like, I'm ready to risk it all. That's it. I'm ready to go. But then you talk about that I'm going to put a mask on. The server's going to come over to my table and order through a mask and only drop the mask when she brings the food and then leaves again or he brings the food and leaves again. I don't think I'm in.

No. This is like, I mean, after all we've been through in the past three months or whatever, I can't imagine making a contrary. a conscious decision to make my life feel more like a dystopic future? Like, I don't, like, what is the circumstance? Like, if I had asked you six months ago, like, it showed you a picture of, like, servers wearing masks and the bartender wearing masks, the employees wearing masks, what would you have guessed?

You would have guessed, like, the Joker was on the loose again, and we have to protect ourselves against whatever, like, serum. He's, like, floating around the air. It doesn't make, it's just nuts. Why would you? Oh, God, I don't know. Yeah. And like I said, it's easy to make fun of this and to go, ha, ha, look at these people who are taking their lives in their own hands.

But I have a feeling this is going to be America writ large, even if it's, you know, four or five, six months down the line. Half-filled restaurants, four people at a bar, everybody wearing masks. We're going to have to get used to this. Let me take you somewhere else. Collieville, Texas. We see you, Tarrant County. Listen to this report from Friday from the local station. there in BC 5.

So we've had people from Garland and Mansfield and just all over. In the last two days, outdoor seating in Colleyville has become quite popular. Because we've been stuck in quarantine for so long, and finally someone's letting people on the patio. It's a beautiful day and we're, you know, bored. We've been cooking a lot of meals at home. Last week, the mayor of Colleyville eased rules, and for the first time in more than a month, restaurants with outdoor seating can now serve customers in person. You know, sales, of course, tanked when this all happened, but the last couple of days have been exciting.

Ted Price is the owner of Costa Vita Fresh Mexican Grill in Collieville. He says they're still following the social distancing guidelines. They've placed patio tables six feet apart. Employees are wearing masks, gloves, and they're constantly sanitizing tables, chairs, and doors. Just doing the best we can to be wise and be precautioned. We're tailgating for glorious. What's an hour wait? Because of the physical distancing, patio space is limited and wait times are long.

So people are camping out at some restaurants like Gloria's. We just sat out for an hour and a half and waited while we drank our margaritas. I would just like to say formally that despite what I said prior to that club, after just seeing and to some degree imagining the food at both Glorias, and I believe it was Costa Vita, healthy Mexican food. I retract everything, and I will happily wait in a line amongst sick people for an hour for some like chips and salsa. I'm at a good frozen margarita.

Tex-Mex is the line, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. Like real Tex-Mex. Real, quote-unquote, text-Mex. Yeah, I agree. And if you could see the video here, this is what, like, your classic Texas suburban strip mall, which, you and I grew up around and in.

And everyone's either waiting on the bed of their truck or in the little strips of grass to get into the restaurant. It looks like Mayfest in Fort Worth, except outside a Mexican restaurant. Does it make a difference to you mentally as to whether you eat inside the reopened restaurant or only on the patio of the reopened restaurant as this is happening? I mean, I would say the patio feels a lot less risky and I'm sure statistically it's probably not.

But normally I'm not an outside eater. I mean, I'll eat outside. But usually just whatever, being on the sidewalk or in the backyard, it slightly distracts me from just the pure joy of consuming gross stuff. But this seems like a case where I don't want to get, I don't want to, I don't, I wouldn't want to myself to be fully seduced by, you know, the interior of one of these chain restaurants. It's part of the experience, yes, but it also, I don't think I would have my wits about me to the same degree as if I had a little fresh air.

How about a haircut, David? This may apply to me a little bit more than you. No, no, no, mine's growing out. It's growing out. Okay, you need a trim. You, K.O. Underwood, owner of the good look, barbershop in Marietta, Georgia, tells CBS he's taking the following precautions.

He has masks and gloves. Each workstation at the barbershop is equipped with Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer. He can remove every other barber chair, if necessary, to kind of spread people out. But of course, this is a haircut, right? A barber can wear a mask during the haircut, but a haircut is still a pretty intimate experience. and for some reason when I when I was reading the story I kept thinking of you know how the old school barber does the thing where they do like the hot shaving cream on your neck and the straight razor do I have to move like the the back of the mask up you know so they can get to the neck and then move it down so they can trim me in the back I just can't imagine doing that right now that's even more intimate than like a restaurant setting right you're being fussed over you know when you're getting a haircut right that that's the whole point I've heard a lot of chatter

over the past, as has everybody over the past month or two about haircuts. And I got to fess up. As someone who's used as only had like a straight razor or sorry, has only used clippers to trim my hair for the past literally 20 years. It's a little bit alien to me. I do go to the barbershop, you know, to get my head shaved the only since, you know, I get the beard trim too. But the degree to which the need for a barbershop is sort of occupied and to some degree monopolize the conversation about reopening America has been a little bit stunning to me.

I understand like the social aspect of it, but you know, I think we could all stand to let our hair grow for a few months, right? It's not fun when your neck gets shaggy, but that is not where I'm going to draw the line. TextMex may be yes, but that's not where I'm going to draw the line.

A couple of big ideas coming out all this that I think are interesting. I think at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic here in the U.S., I naively imagine, okay, the virus is going to come, it's going to be terrible, and then at some point, maybe in the distant future, we're going to get a big thumbs up from a political figure who says, okay, it's okay to resume your lives, everybody,

and we all kind of would walk out the door at the same time. That's clearly not what's going to happen with this. It's more like, well, if you want to risk it, go ahead. You are free in some states to go out. I was amused by this. Anchorage Alaska's mayor, Ethan Berkowitz, told the New York Times that even though restaurants are open there as of Monday, Berkowitz was going to be sticking with takeout for the time being. So the restaurants are open, but Ethan Berkowitz is not going to the restaurants in his own city to eat out.

We saw a fairly dramatic example of this with the Las Vegas mayor who was on Anderson Cooper. The casinos are open, but I'm staying home because I've got a family for God's sakes. So we're not going to get a moment in American life where, you know, the drawbridge comes down. And that's a signal. It's totally based on do you want to take that chance and how willing are you to take that chance. And that's, you know, a wonderful Anandian fantasy of how civilized society should work. Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to prove to be particularly functional. this is one of those situations where, despite the specter of Big Brother and all other forms of governmental oppression, this is what the government's job is, both on a national level and a state level and a city level, they're supposed to be the assholes that say, no, you have to stay inside right now so that we don't get to make these decisions for ourselves. Because when we get to make these decisions for ourselves, you and I, people who blather on about how serious this situation

is on a biweekly basis would go sprinting out the door into a cloud of coronavirus for some casso right now right that's the problem and we just can't and the idea that everyone just like you know what we trust you to be safe i mean i am in i am in the wilderness right now i am as far away from new york city as a tank of gas and you know Airbnb registration would take me and all it took was people just batting their eyelashes at the end of social distancing on the nightly news for stuff to start opening back up. There are farm stands open now that were not open four days ago and that were certainly not open two months ago. There are tourists, I mean, things that are nominally just there for tourists

to be tourist locations are now opening up all of a sudden. And sure, they're probably doing it safely. And of all the things who have closed, you know, I mean, of all the things to reopen, they're probably some of the best options. They're open air, et cetera, et cetera. But just to see the sign as I was driving by the other day was sort of halting. It is. And by the way, same here in Huntington Beach. Beautiful weather this weekend, classic California, spring, weekend, sunshine, everything. Guess what was open here in Huntington Beach?

That's right. The beach. Parking lots closed. Some of the street parking there on the Pacific Coast Highway closed, but the beach was open. And I'm walking around and down Main Street, all I see are people headed to the beach. It was like they closed the parking lots of Disneyland but left Disneyland itself open. That was the effect. And other beaches around here in Orange County are closed. And you know what conversation, every single person that's out there on the beach,

let me, let me qualify for that. Ninety-six percent of the people who are walking to the beach right then. You know what conversation they had right before walking to the beach? You think we should do it? Well, they say it's okay. It's open. It's open. You know? Well, I have, It's open. We should go to the beat. I agree. It was really funny, too, because I saw a Trumpy protest. I know he said we weren't going to get political, but I saw a Trumpy protest right across the street from the beach down here. And these guys, one of them had a CNN fake news t-shirt. And another one was holding up a sign that said, shut down the shutdown.

Shut down. The beach across the street from you is open, dude. It's not shut down. It's open. You go to the beach. Go take a dip. Surfers going by on their bike. with the boards under their arm. It's absolutely incredible.

And I think that brings up another point I wanted to make, which is the reopening of America is going to be wildly different, region to region, and even block to block. On that news video we played, there are restaurants in the Collieville, Texas strip mall that were not open,

while some of those Tex-Mex places were. Churches in Georgia were allowed to reopen by Governor Brian Kemp there. But several, including the Catholic Diocese, said, no, we're not opening. So as we sort of go back into society, I think we'll find that, you know, like half of society, a quarter of society is open, even when the rules say it's okay or at least don't prohibit you to. What a strange feeling that is, too, to combine with the dystopian elements that you talk about. The other thing I think we're going to hear is this idea that it's a free country. I found this phrase this week. Tarrant County Judge Glenn Whitley, that's where

Callyville, Texas is, tells NBC 5 he'd prefer everyone follow the same restrictions, but he wouldn't insist on it. Well, it's a free country, Whitley says. This isn't a police state. Can we argue that there's a difference between full-on police state and,

hey, the beach is closed for a few more weeks. Don't go get at every one's sake. There's probably a happy medium to be found between those two things. The other thing is, the real The reopening of America, David, will not be motivated by science so much as boredom and gut feeling. Chris put this in our notes. I thought this was interesting.

According to an analysis released Monday by Harvard researchers in Statenews, 31 states are not performing enough tests to even determine a safe reopening timeline. New York and New Jersey would need to be performing 100,000 and 68,000 more tests today to create such a timeline, but neither state has plans to reopen. States now attempting to reopen are also not meeting those testing thresholds. Georgia must do around 10,000 tests per day. It's been averaging 4,000. Florida, 16,000.

In the last week, it's been hitting just over 10,000. So again, it's not like you're hitting a benchmark of any kind. It's not like you're saying, well, here's the number. It's not totally safe, but this is what we're doing. It's just pure gut. Gut plus this isn't a police state. It's a free country. so feel free to go out and have some Mexican or some maybe some barbecue if you're down there in Georgia.

Yeah, I mean, this just feels like I just feel so queasy watching the news. I mean, even to see, you know, our nation's beloved governor, Andrew Cuomo, being incredibly cautious and seemingly demurring from, you know, setting any sort of dates or timelines or whatever, but still kind of going through step by step what the organizational process for reopening the state would be, feel. like he's already sort of, I mean, maybe it's the thing, maybe he has to do it, but it feels like he's sort of caving to this pressure to reopen. And, you know, if he's re-opened, if he's caving, then I think, I feel like we're all going to be caving soon. I just think that, I hope that nothing terrible comes from this. But as terrible is what I'm about to say sounds, I mean, I know, I know this sounds terrible. I guess I should, is what I should say, but like, I just hope that we move at least somewhat slowly enough, these other states that are opening move slowly

enough that when something inevitably terrible does happen, there's time to put the brakes on. You would hope so. You would hope so. But I'm not sure what that's going to be. Yeah, you mentioned Cuomo. He did sort of a sub-tweet earlier today saying protecting public health comes first in all decisions, meaning in New York, will be data driven as opposed to it. And you talk about the pressure to open that. That's an interesting question, right? Because is there public pressure to open these things kind of right the surveys we've seen all across america have shown that while most a lot of people want to reopen the economy and return to work there are not overwhelming majorities for any of these things americans are somewhat surprisingly i think okay with hunkering down now they

won't be that indefinitely but in the near term they've been very very good about hunkering down the pressure such as it is has come from the white house from politics politicians like Brian Kemp in Georgia and from some of these very small, scraggly protest movements that we've seen in the various states. But I don't know that there is overwhelming public pressure right now. I think this is just, you know, let's do it and be legends kind of reopening by various authorities around the country. I mean, I think there's probably more pressure than, you know, you and I realize,

but we're not necessarily surrounded by the people who are. you know, the sources of that pressure. But yeah, I mean, I feel like there's, I think there's a lot of people that still don't understand the gravity of the situation. And as such, and even, and even if those people are, those people are presumably the ones

who are the source of any pressure that governors may be feeling, there's, I mean, I, whatever. I just, I just feel like the people who are, the people who are nonplussed enough to not understand why we're in this situation, why, why we're staying inside, again, are probably not the people who'd want to be left up, who you'd want to give their own,

you know, give this sort of volition to decide whether or not they should keep themselves saved, but whatever. Good thing we didn't get political in that segment. I want to put one more clip, by the way, from Texas. This is more from NBC5. And again, I'm not casting judgments here, but again, as a preview of what the world is going to look like over the next few months,

listen to this rationale about why one chooses to go out and eat. As local and state leaders debate the timeline on want to reopen, these customers say they're ready. I know COVID serious and all, but I'm kind of ready to get back to normal and I feel like this is a good test. I feel like what will be will be and if you get sick, stay home.

Work our way through the challenges day by day and sooner or later it'll be back to normal. There it is. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod. A piece in Politico last week, David, said that Joe Biden was toying whether to use a digital firm owned by Mike Bloomberg for his 2020 online effort.

Okay. The voters resoundingly rejected Mike Bloomberg for president. But he's got these wonderful toys and the Bloomberg campaign or excuse me, the Biden campaign might wind up going with that for its digital strategy. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. The path to the White House in 2020 goes through American Samoa. Thanks to Michael T. Elsewhere in the news, David, this week. And I think this one wins the overworked Twitter joke of the week.

If you're watching the NFL draft last Thursday, you notice that Green Bay, the Green Bay Packers spent a first round pick on Jordan Love quarterback, despite the fact that they still have legendary quarterback Aaron Rogers playing and playing at a reasonably high level. Sounds like it could be kind of tense with Aaron, no. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Aaron is going to love Jordan like a brother. Thanks to Eric Reynolds.

Did you see what he did there? Jordan, Jordan Rogers, the basket guy. If you discovered the content stream that fills both the Ringer NFL show, Bachelor Party and the press box, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. David, we're going to revisit the worm himself, Dennis Rodman. but first a quick break. David, if you're looking for a perfect gift for mom or another loved one this mother's day,

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just go to skylightframe.com and enter code press box. That's S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T-F-R-A-M-E dot com code press box. All right, David, in the notebook dump, if you watch the ESP and Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance Sunday Night, you heard a lot about Dennis Rodman, an outsized, almost unavoidable pop culture figure of the 90s. He dated Madonna.

He married Carlin. and Electra. He wore a wedding dress to promote a memoir, and he wore nothing, meaning he was naked on the cover of said memoir. And oh yeah, Dennis Rodman kicked absolute ass as a basketball player. Let Gary Payton explain that. Dennis Robin was the fuck up person. He just fucks everything up. He's a pest shutting down whoever he wanted to. It was always a challenge. He was one of the players and it changed the game just by his presence. If we're thinking about Dennis Robbins as a 90s media figure, first up, David, how do we explain just how big he was during that period of time?

It's hard to even answer the question because you want to compare him to another athlete. But the frame of reference is so skewed outside of... Michael Jordan, who can hardly be categorized as a famous athlete, he was just a famous being. There weren't any really, like, famous basketball players. I mean, it's like there, it's, to be a celebrity, to be a crossover celebrity is something so utterly different than just to be a professional athlete in, in this era. And Dennis Rodman, Dennis Rodman was a household name in an era where there were probably only three basketball players that were household names, right?

I mean, he was, I mean, if you asked, you know, the metaphorical or the hypothetical, my mom, you know, my actual, my actual mom would have, you know, my actual mom was somewhat fluent basketball. We watched a lot of basketball around the house, but, but even still, I mean, most grandmas or moms would know, you know, probably Jordan Bird Magic, uh, probably maybe Scotty Pippen as part of Michael Jordan runoff at that point. I'm not sure the list would go much deeper than that. And Dennis Robin was certainly had more cultural relevance than anybody except maybe Jordan Bird and Magic. And at that point, maybe everybody except for Jordan. I think he was arguably at least in the time frame of this movie, meaning the late 90s, 97, 98, that area.

I think you could argue he was the second, you know, biggest in cultural terms, player in the NBA behind Michael Jordan. I don't think that's a stretch at all. In this documentary, he has a sit-down

with Barbara Walters. Remember what a huge deal getting the Barbara Walters sit-down was? I mean, in the 90s, like the guest list was Dennis Rodman and like Boris Yeltsin was the second one.

His bestseller, bad as I want to be. A huge book, all the revelations from that book became individual news stories. during the book tour he announced he was getting married and then arrived at the book signing in a white wedding dress.

The idea was he was marrying himself. By the way, I forgot that that actually happened at a Barnes & Noble in New York. The most interesting thing that has ever happened, culturally speaking, at a Barnes & Noble. I also forgot that that book came out in May of 1996. Like when the Bulls are about to win a title, can you imagine weeks away from playing in the NBA finals that Dennis Rodman comes out with a book

Yeah His hair color was a thing Such a thing What will Dennis Rodman's Hair look like tonight He had that incident Where he kicked a photographer Remember that at a during a basketball game

When he went flying into the things Bill Clinton And I read this old Stephen Roder Profile of Robin Bill Clinton was moved to comment on that saying I'm sure in his heart of hearts he regrets doing that I'm a big Rodman fan president of the United States said that about the Dennis Rodman kicking incident he was a wrestler kind of like gronk is but I feel way bigger than gronk you know as a cultural figure

as much as gronk has tried to inflate himself into kind of a modern day you know facsimile and then just the fact that as you pointed out he played for the Chicago Bulls you know He was already this kind of provocative character. And then he gets put on the Bulls with Jordan Pippen with three straight titles. So now you can't dismiss him as, oh, he's good at basketball and kind of this guy doing his own thing. It's like, oh, my gosh, he's a three-time NBA champion. So he not only has cultural cachet, but like just red meat sports radio cachet as well. That's actually a really great list.

I mean, a really great breakdown of all the ways that he was significant. I mean, I keep coming back to the fact that celebrity in the 90s was just defined in a different way. And I don't even think it's an easy thing to put your finger on because it was sort of an era in search of a definition of stardom. But it's a great way to put it. But it was, I don't know. I mean, the idea that, I mean, it was in an era where, like, Howard Stern interview could be the biggest thing that happened to, you know, for, I mean, in a month, you know, but which just seems wild. Like a radio interview would do that. But it was something where, but there was a degree to which it was just sort of.

everyone just kind of stopping and pointing at a thing being relevant. Like it wasn't, we didn't, I don't know, it's so hard, it's so hard to put a finger on. But there was a, there were a lot less rules. And I guess it's, you know, sort of applies to Dennis Robben, but the fact that you were allowed to release, that he was allowed to release the book when he did. The fact that we saw in the documentary, he was allowed to, you know, take trips and go be on wrestling shows and stuff like that. And obviously that was the Bulls organization had to allow him to do that.

but it just seemed like there was so much less structure, you know, around, I mean, if a player like him tried to release a book or a documentary or something like that on the eve of the finals, like Adam Silver would appear out of nowhere with a batarang and tie him up, you know, I mean, like there's no way that it would happen. And it was, but to a certain extent, it was just Dennis Rodman. It was his, his entire persona was existing in the sort of negative space around the expectations. of a professional athlete. Like, none of the rules applied to him. You know, yeah,

I almost wondered if there were actually more rules and that he was just had this amazing ability to attract people's attention because whatever rule formal or informal

there was about going and being a wrestler during the NBA playoffs, Dennis Rodman was breaking a rule. Sure. Because I remember the way that was talked about. You know,

he was breaking all kinds of us. I just feel in a larger sense that he, looking back now, and I don't think either you or I realized this at the time, but he just scrambled the circuits of 1990s media culture completely. I mean, I was thinking about this as we were putting together notes this morning. In 1991, Will Chamberlain comes out with that book saying he'd slept with 20,000 women. Five years after that, Dennis Rodman, a fellow basketball player, a fellow sportsman,

comes out with a book and writes a following, to hang out in a gay bar or put on a sequin halter top makes me feel like a total person and not just a one dimensional man continuing to quote here i paint my fingernails i color my hair i sometimes wear women's clothes i want to challenge people's image of what an athlete is supposed to be on the one hand you have the kind of like singular image of this is what an athlete is right then you have dennis rodman coming along going oh not that simple not that simple i'm not going to be categorized by that i love this interview he did with Oprah in 1996. They just gotten finished talking

about women's clothes. Listen to the way Oprah back in 96 talks about sexuality. Listen to the way Dennis Rodman talks about sexuality. You're saying to me, you are not gay. And if you were gay, I believe you would tell me. I think so.

I think so. So are you bisexual? No. You're not bisexual? No. You do say in the... Well, you don't have to applaud or not applause. Okay, you do say in the...

You do say in this book, say that maybe in your mind you are. And what does that mean? I can float with the idea. You can float with the idea. I can float with it, float with it out, however you want to look at. I can do anything I want.

Up here, that means I'm going to act and do it. I think a lot of people, a lot of people can say to you, a lot of people say, well, I can never be with a man. You know, a lot of guys that say, I can never be with a man. Yeah. How can you say, you say, I cannot? You think all men have thought about it? Of course.

Of course. I mean, if you sit up there, if I ask one of these guys here, You like to be with a man? No, no, that's just disgusting. That's just disgusting. How do you know it's disgusting? How do you know it's disgusting? Uh-huh.

You don't know. You don't know. I mean, I'm not trying to go out there. I'm not going to go out there and try it, but I'm just saying that you don't know. Man, that's why Oprah would make such a good president because she can say something that in retrospect is like totally indefensible, but it just like somehow just the syncopation of her voice

just makes you feel like it was totally okay. Rodman was, well, I think the biggest thing that we forget about Dennis Rodman, and this people of our generation too is how sort of like lucid he was, right? I mean, just how at the time it did feel like a publicity stunt. And rewatching a lot of the footage, you realized that it wasn't, right?

Or it was the most well put together one, publicity stunt of all time. But that he was just being, he was expressing himself in a really sort of thoughtful and clear way at a time when the world was not equipped to hear what he was saying. And he was sort of given this incredible platform

by virtue of who he was, you know, by who he was as a professional athlete, but, you know, he was, if the world was ready to give him a platform, they weren't necessarily ready to listen to what he was talking about.

Yeah, if you ever want to explore the attitudes about sexuality in the 1990s, go watch that episode of Oprah, which is on YouTube, and see what the crowd applauds for and doesn't applaud for. It's a pretty interesting thing. But yeah, you're right.

Like, Oprah is doing, by the standards of 1996, a pretty sensitive interview, I think. She's taking very seriously, you know, she's not casting aspersons or anything like that. But you see what she's doing, right? She's trying to say, okay, I've got these three, one of three boxes I want to put you in in terms of your sexuality. You're this, you're this or you're this. Dennis Rodman is up there on national television saying it's not that simple, right?

Human identity, human sexuality is not as simple as you're making it out to be. and I'm not going to be put in one of these boxes, right? And I'm not going to be shy about what I think in my head, you know, and I'm not also going to be. But if I have a stray thought or more than a stray thought, I'm not going to be pigeonholed by that either. It's complicated. And it's funny to see just from a media perspective how far we've come with all the discussion we have in this day and age about platforming and deep platforming and everything else that Oprah was like more than happy to have Dennis Rodman on her show, give him the space to say what everyone wanted to say, but then also be like, hey, you people in the crowd, if you don't. don't like gaze, I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to get in your way. You know, it's like, I don't want to lose any viewers over your homophobia, but, but I am going to give Dennis Rodman

the chance of the opportunity to speak here. And everybody watching was just like, yeah, yeah, zoom in, you know? I mean, it's kind of crazy. And at the beginning of this interview, there was a parental advisory from Oprah. Like, your kids may be big basketball fans, but you may want to have them think twice about sitting in front of that. That was how Dennis Rodman was handled at the time. Oh, my God. And I do want to get it one thing, because I want to get a bigger question here about how Dennis Rodman would be covered today if he were an NBA player in 2020. Let's say as a member of the Lakers playing with LeBron as helping trying to help LeBron or another title or the Warriors or whatever, you mentioned publicity stunt, right? All of Dennis was kind of

covered like a publicity stunt in the 90s. You cannot argue that there was not a lot of publicity stunt within the package, right? No matter how interesting he was. I mean, he, he was, he had ways of very, very, you know, being very deliberate about I am going to get everybody's attention today. I'm going to, no matter what I'm going to say, I'm going to get everybody's attention. And just to under, just to underline that, even if I agree, this was a lot of it was incredible, most of it was very, very deliberate on Dennis Rodman's part. But even if it weren't, even if this were just the expression, even if he woke up and he said, I want to arrive at my book signing in a wedding dress and, you know, whatever car. it still took a PR team to like to arrange the arrival at the, you know, at a given time through the streets of New York through crowds or whatever.

Like it was a, it was not just, it was not just like, you know, a man innocently wandering in in a wedding ground. Yeah. And it was in a handsome cab, by the way, if we're being specific about how he arrived at that bookstore is Dennis Rodman, right? When I was spare no expense. It's funny because the sports media is completely changed, right, in a lot of ways since the 90s.

They're much more pro athlete now. They're much more willing to defend athletes, right? So I think on the one hand, you could probably argue that Rodman would have had a lot more backup, you know, when he disappears, when he goes on this vacation in the middle of the season to Vegas that we hear about in the last dance and doesn't come back. You would have certainly had people that would be mad at him in 2020 for that or, you know, kind of writing the column like Dennis needs to get it together. but I also think he probably would have had allies, more allies in the sports media, and more people who were parsing his words a little bit more and say, look, he's saying something important here about identity, about sexuality, right? When he has this episode where he considered suicide when he was a member of the Detroit Pistons

that he also wrote about in his book, you know, and the Pistons, and that led to this breakup, which is also in the documentary from the Pistons. I think you just would have seen a lot of sports writers and media people come to his defense in a very different way than they did in the 90s. Yeah, I think that's true. I also think, though, that he would have fit into a different sort of framework in the modern era altogether. It's what I was kind of getting at the very beginning of the segment that I think that even though he was, I think, distinct in so many ways from anyone that's even come after him, the fact that there's so much publicity stunt. I mean, I think that the natural inclination would be to lump him in with, you know,

this is like James Harden dating a Kardashian sort of, you know. I mean, this is a publicity, a lot of the, that's how we sort of understand publicity stunts in this day and age. What he's doing was totally different. Don't get me wrong, but I do think that despite all of this stuff, he would not be the second most famous basketball player in the world today, right? I mean, I think that there are other people who are more crassly going after PR stunts in a way that kind of has gotten them more attention and there are athletes with, you know,

greater cultural cachet just by virtue of being, you know, celebrity endorsers and whatever else. But I do think that you're right that he would be treated totally separately, I mean, totally differently by a distinct portion of the media. The other thing, the other,

I mean, the flip side of that, though, is that there are, we saw this like, you know, with the Kevin Durant era warrior is how it ended up, the biggest issue didn't,

that the team had ended up being the way that they were being covered. Right? Not though, it wasn't that there was any personality. disputes you see this over and over again so much as like you're allowing a situation in to happen in which reporters are asking me about you every day and that becomes the biggest problem between teammates and that certainly could have been more of an issue would have might have been more of an issue in the modern age than it was back then when it's sort of wild that like

michael jordan wasn't on sports center every day or wasn't on ESPN every day just being like guys quit talking about rodman we're good like i like everything he does i i like i'm it's with my okay But at the same time, who knows? Maybe if Jordan were asked about that every day by someone in the media or by someone with a television camera, that he might have reacted differently. And can you imagine if that trip to Vegas he takes in the middle of the season have been documented by camera phones of 2020?

So it wasn't just like, oh, Dennis is off somewhere, but on Twitter, like every 10 minutes, we were getting live feeds of Dennis at the craps table. Or having a drink in a bar. I'm not sure the craps table is the bar that we needed to work. about it. Yeah. Imagine if, you know, how we do on Twitter now where we find these little moments from games and, and blow them up, right? A little, some, you know, reading lips, right? Russell Westbrook, like secretly eating food in the crowd. Imagine what a just absolute crazy source

of those moments Dennis Rodman would have been. And speaking of like people asking Michael Jordan about stuff. Just imagine Jordan every day or LeBron getting a question because some, somebody blew up something from a game that's on satellite, again, much more easily accessible than it was in the 90s. And it's like, look, did you see what Dennis did? Did you see what he said to Clay Thompson in the second quarter? Did you see that? I think that would have been just crazy. And he had a bunch of those anyway in old media. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's totally reasonable to even ask had we had, I mean, had that era existed today, not just him, but if that entire, you know, if we had the level of media scrutiny then that we do today, would he have even got. made it to the Bulls. If the way that he, as a Detroit Piston, it'd treated the Bulls, it shoved Scottie Pippin,

a litany of other things, if that had been replayed in Bulls' locker rooms every night for the, you know, for five years, would he even have been accepted to walk in the door? I mean, it's, there's, so much would be different. So much would be different. No, absolutely. And the other thing about Dennis,

from a 90s perspective, is he's part of that generation of athletes, so I think I said this one time, donated his body to sports writing. Oh, yeah, that's a great way to put it. He gave so many interviews. he is still giving interviews. You know, he was super accessible, very shy in his manner,

almost soft-spoken, but, you know, like profiles of Dennis Rodman from the 90s, there were so many. Then there was this kind of like series of Dennis Rodman, you know, 16th minute, like Stephen Roderick's, I believe was in the early 2000s in New York Times Magazine. There's just been so many. When he did, when he tried to get clean, I found this out from his Wikipedia page, he did it with two different reality shows, celebrity rehab and then sober house.

Wow. And the impetus for him to get clean was an appearance on celebrity apprentice. So make that three reality shows. There's also, you know, I don't want to sweep aside too. There's a lot, there were some definite darkness here too and some bad stuff. Domestic violence charges,

at least one of which ended in a no contest plea. This whole North Korean diplomacy. thing that brought him this strange little boomlet of attention a couple of years ago. Chuck Daly, former Pistons coach, now deceased, and a father figure to Robben tells Stephen Roderick, that's Dennis's problem. He's lost himself. He can't see where one starts and the other ends. He's talking about his image. He's convinced he has to play up to that. I know that's not him. The shy kid I met is who he is. So, too, there's this whole kind of afterlife of stardom, too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

And I mean, you have to wonder how much his treatment post-stardom would have been different if he had been handled, if we had digested his life in the modern era. Right. I mean, he's sort of part of a kind of laughing stock class now, which is sort of exclusive to his moment of celebrity, right? I mean, it's not a certain kind of celebrity, but it was almost like, like we were saying before, it was a culture, as a culture, we didn't know exactly how to define. define this sort of celebrity that existed outside of movies and or movie stardom. And there are a lot of, it feels like a lot of the people that kind of got, in that broadly defined category were sort of, you know, didn't end up better for it, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it.

Yeah. And maybe in this kind of thought experiment, he has his own Instagram account and his own Twitter account, right? This kind of weird, like, you know, documentary thing about him that he's just, you know, you know, speaking directly a lot more. Instead of having to wait for the celebrity apprentice to call and kind of, you know, use him as pop culture, kind of, you know, detritus or whatever.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's kind of interesting. Like, what would he have said on that? I can't even imagine. Let's do one more segment before we do the headline. It's called the Lysol presidency. You've heard this sound by now, Dave, but we just have to revisit it here.

Donald Trump last Thursday, road tested another off-bring cure for the coronavirus, injecting yourself with disinfectant. Listen up. Right, and then I see the disinfectant, but it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number of the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that, so that you're going to have to use medical doctors

with, but it sounds, it sounds interesting to me. So we'll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that's pretty powerful. All it's going to take is one terrible, knock on wood, terrible airline tragedy for President Trump to get in front of a microphone and do Jerry Seinfelds, why don't they make the whole airplane out of black box routine? Like this is, like, it's bad workshopping stand-up, and somehow this is what this man seriously thanks passes for like rational thinking. I don't understand. I don't know if my favorite detail was Dr.

Deborah Birx sitting offstage while he was saying that with her hands clasped in her lap like she was waiting for a loved one to have surgery. Or the Lysol account on Twitter that is at Lysol, tweeting, reminder, Lysol disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as directed and in line with usage guidelines. Never mind Dr. Trump. Joe Biden tweeted, I can't believe I have to say this, but please don't drink bleach. When you've set up Joe Biden, you've said something monumentally stupid. Oh, my God.

The other funny thing about this, David, was there's this whole gang of Trump allies that comes to his defense whenever he says anything. They defend the indefensible. Kaylee McEnany, new White House press secretary, said the media took Trump's words out of context. Breitbart did a fact check saying, In fact, Trump did not say what the media implied, he'd said. Then on Friday, after he had been defended, Trump came forward and said,

despite what my defenders would tell you, I was actually talking about taking bleach. Listen up. Can you clarify your comments about injections of disinfectant? They're quite provocative. I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen. Now, disinfectant for doing this,

maybe on the hands would work. And I was asking the question of the gentleman who was there yesterday, Bill, because when they say that something will last three or four hours or six hours, but if the sun is out or if they use disinfectant, it goes away less than a minute. Did you hear about this yesterday? But I was asking a sarcastic and a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside. But it does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands.

That would make things much better. That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to the reporters. As long as it was done in the form of a sarcastic question, a very sarcastic question to the reporters. That's the perfect distillation of a Trump defense, right? That he would just like, I did not say, I did not say what you're claiming that I said, but I meant every word of it.

And he did it again over the weekend. You see those tweets about he was mad at the New York Times again. he was tweeting about noble prizes, not Nobel prizes, but saying reporters win noble prices. Now, first of all, there's no saying it's the Nobel Prize. Second of all, reporters do not typically win Nobel prizes, which is what he was talking about.

And then when he got called on it, and I think he even deleted the tweet, he tweeted, does anybody get the meeting of what a so-called noble, perenn, not Nobel Prize is? especially as it pertains to reporters and journalists. Noble is defined as having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals.

Does sarcasm ever work? Oh, my God. So he's saying, no, no, no, you know, you think I said something stupid, aha, but it's you who are stupid because you did not get my sense of humor. And I was being sarcastic. No bullpriced. Donald Trump, ladies and gentlemen,

in a related story, Axios as John Swan, reports that Trump's coronavirus briefings are going to be paired back. They're not going so well. By the way, we don't have time for this, but someday we should do an alternate history where Trump never gave a coronavirus briefing and Mike Pence gave them all.

And the administration's response was equally lackluster, but just Mike Pence appeared at the podium every day and seemed concerned. Yeah. And how different that would be? I'd kind of like to run that someday. All right, time for David Shoemaker guesses the strain pun. Tuesday's book title

about Robert E. Lee's bedraggled Confederate Army was Lee's miserable a pun on Le Miserab. By the way, thanks to all the people who wrote in to remind me that Andrew Lloyd Weber did not write the music for Le Miserab. I'm an idiot. It's always great to history explain

and then just get a fact wrong. Thank you. Pressbox listeners. Today's headline comes from the New York Times, David. It was a top Mark Stein's column about Bulls coach Phil Jackson. Did you see this? No. Whose image is being restored a little bit, I think, by the last dance.

You know, Jackson was known as this terrible personnel guy with the New York Knicks. But now we're being reminded that he was in fact a genius coach of the Chicago Bulls, someone who could get the best out of guys like Dennis Rodman. I'm going to give you a head start here. You fill in the rest. For Jackson, Bulls series brings legacy blank. What was the New York Times as strained pun headline? Full circle brings legacy full triangle.

Is that it? Yes. Brings his legacy full triangle. Yes. I don't think I'm not sure I fully co-signed that one, but I'm excited to have gotten it so quickly. Yes, Phil Jackson and his assistant text winner, the proponents of the triangle offense.

He is David Chewmaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Lowe made a production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Thursday when we're going to answer. to your listener mail about anything, send us out on Twitter. I also want to talk, David, about how brands have seized on coronavirus TV commercial. Yeah. In this challenging time, we hear at El Pollo Loco, we'd like to tell you, et cetera, et

and of course more loquem takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.