The Press Box - The Return of Hannibal Lecter, the Trump Hack, and a ‘Hard Knocks’ Check-In With Alan Siegel

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan welcomes The Ringer’s own Hollywood bureau chief, Alan Siegel. They both share some of their lukewarm takes on the media and the following subjects: Donald Trump’s love affair with Hannibal Lecter (01:31). The Donald Trump hack: documents sent to Politico emails (8:42) A sports documentary check-in on 'Hard Knocks' and 'Receiver' (18:15) The essence of cable news (28:01) Australian B-girl Raygun breaks her silence (37:26) Alan closes out with a few of his “only journalism words" (43:22) Plus, David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Alan Siegel Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, your boy Johnny Bananas here. The Challenge Season 40 Battle of the Eras is finally upon us. I'll be covering every episode with all your favorite challengers on my podcast, death taxes and bananas on the Ringer Reality TV podcast feed and on the brand new Ringer Reality TV YouTube channel where you can find full video episodes all season long. So buckle up. Come along with me as we see who will be crowned winner of the Challenge

Season 40 Battle of the Eras. Follow Ringer reality TV on Spotify and subscribe to us on YouTube. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters. Let us bring in our guest host who is sitting across my office from me. Alan Siegel is officially, at least in my eyes, the Hollywood Bureau Chief of the Ringer. He is the master of the pop culture oral history spanning from Gremlins to the Pine Barron's episode of the Soprano.

a native of Massachusetts, Alan is one of the few people brave enough to bring Boston content to the ringer. Alan, welcome to the press box. Thank you for having me. Ten years of emailing you about media stuff has led to this. It's a true pleasure.

And also texting me about media stuff. Don't sell yourself short. Nonstop at all hours of the night. Let's start with a topic you and I are both fascinated with. Donald Trump's love affair with Hannibal Lecter. Yes, that Hannibal Lecter. Here's a little bit of Donald Trump talking about the good doctor at a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. Silence of the Lamb. Has anyone ever seen the Silence of the Lamb?

The late great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last thing? Excuse me. I'm about to have a friend for dinner. dinner is this poor doctor walk by. I'm about to have a friend for dinner, but Hannibal Lecter, congratulations, the late grade Hannibal Lecter. We have people that are being released into our country that we don't want in our country. So in addition to the oddness of the content of that little clip, there was kind of an interesting tone there too. He's congratulating Hannibal Lecter seemingly for lifetime achievement in cannibalism. Well, the first thing I have to say is that I think this is the one thing that I can sympathize

with Trump about, which is people looking at me funny for incessantly referencing something from 1991. So there's that. But also, it kind of makes sense to me because this is a guy who thinks brutality is funny. His favorite movie is Bloodsport. There's a profile of him from the 90s where there's a scene in the profile with his son, fast-forwarding the movie for him to get to the fights. And Trump is laughing at a part where someone gets punched in the balls. So all of this makes sense. So you're saying Trump is trapped in,

you know, 30-year-old pop culture much like yourself. That's, that is really what's at issue here. Absolutely. And it's been really funny sort of watching the TikTok of this because he hasn't just done this once. He's done it over a dozen times dating back a year, which is insane. But also somehow fitting. Yes, there's a new piece in the Washington Post that was sent to us by listener Siku Burmiss. It's by Marianne Levine and Clara Anz Morse. And they did a count. Trump indeed started talking about Silence of the Lambs in March 2023. It took until October of that year for him to bring Hannibal Lecter into the speech. Post counted 70 speeches Trump has given during this campaign, which started in November 22 for him. And he,

He says, and it says that he has mentioned Lecter or Silence of the Lambs in 20 of those 70 speeches. So if you go to a Trump rally, you have a 28% chance of hearing this reference, which is not bad considering Trump ignores the teleprompter. That's right. And also, as funny as this sounds, it really is pretty ugly because the reference he's trying to make is that migrants are escaping insane asylums and coming into this country. And again, the Lecter thing is something to seize on. But I think, again, we should acknowledge how ugly the reference really is. The post-test and theories about how Trump came to use Hannibal Lecter to make this ugly point. Their first theory is the one you gave, which is that Trump is a creature of a particular period of pop culture.

And they note that Thomas Harris' novel Silence of the Lambs comes out right around the same time as Trump's The Art of the Deal. I want to go ahead and declare that there is no way Trump has ever read a Thomas Harris novel. So that's not true. Trump also went to the 2001 New York premiere of Hannibal with Melania, which is a nice time out of the movies, I suppose. The one thing I didn't like about this article is that they were confined a little bit by newspaper style. It was only things that they could prove. And when we're talking about theories as to why Trump has latched on to Hannibal,

the biggest one, we talked about this a little bit on Monday, is that Donald Trump is confusing political asylum, which some migrants at the border are asking for, with an insane asylum. Like, he might know that those are not exactly the same thing, but those two terms have melded at some point in his mind. He tends to conflate things and blow them up, and his supporters just eat it up.

I mean, the post article had interviews with his supporters, at these rallies kind of laughing at the references and saying that, claiming that they get them, but I don't really believe that. I think they just like that he's saying something that gets a reaction. Yeah, there was one of the supporters said, I think he's just speaking about where the world is today.

I think that's where we are, the divisiveness. I think he's just trying to portray a character that's pretty divisive, and needed a lot of help. And I think America needs a lot of help. Trump is saying that in the asylum, Hannibal Lecter got the help he needed. If only we could help America.

in the same way. Again, it's like this is a one of the most evil characters in all of pop culture and Trump is is making light of it. And that, you know, and him just sort of riffing on the quotes like, I'd like to have you for dinner. Like he just loves blowing these things up. And it doesn't have to make sense because nothing about his ramblings make sense. My other theory about this was that Donald Trump is a creature of a certain period of pop culture is also.

not only confusing political asylum and insane asylum, but Silence of the Lambs and Scarface? Because this isn't, I mean, remind me here, you know all these movies much better than I do, but doesn't Scarface open with this idea that Castro was sending people from the asylums into Miami, the Marial Boat Lift? Right. And that Tony Montana, the protagonist of the movie is sort of a product of that. He's in like a, he's in a jail basically at the beginning and he gets out. And the other theory that's sort of pop culture related is,

that he's confusing Hannibal Lecter or Anthony Hopkins, who plays Hannibal Lecter with John Voight, who's a big Trump supporter. And again, there's no way to prove that connection, but this is so inscrutable that it's, I just have to bring it up because what else could it be? Do you read the deadline story where they had to break it to Anthony Hopkins that Trump was talking about this on the trail? He was absolutely dumbfounded. He didn't know how to respond.

Anthony Hopkins, not on Twitter, so he's not getting these regular updates. Last thing about that post story they mentioned, which I recommend people go and read, is that they reached out to the Trump campaign for comment. And this was the comment. President Trump is an inspiring and gifted storyteller and referencing pop culture as one of the many reasons why he can successfully connect with the audience and voters, whereas Vice President Kamala Harris is as relatable as a worn-out couch. So we're touting Trump's pop culture references there and then also trying to reclaim the couch joke.

Even the comments that his reps are making are insulting. And again, it's it's very much a reflection of him. Slightly more seriously, let's talk about the Donald Trump hack. There was a story on last Saturday from Politico's Alex Eisenstadt. He starts like this. On July 22nd, Politico began receiving emails from, an anonymous account. Over the course of the past few weeks,

the person who used an AOL email account and identified themselves only as Robert relayed what appeared to be internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official. One of the documents sent to Politico was what appears to be a J.D. Vance vetting document. So they're looking for their potential VEPs. And here we go.

We're going to go through all these. The couch jokes were not anticipating. in that document. We're going to go through all these things and find potential vulnerabilities, what will people attack him on that sort of thing. So how did this person or person's robber get these documents? Well, Microsoft has said that there was a hacking group called Mint Sandstorm that's affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard that got into the account of a former presidential campaign advisor. Your Times says that that advisor, if we're talking about the same person here is Roger Stone, former Trump advisor and Richard Nixon man, whose hotmail was hacked.

We're really using the best the internet has to offer with this story. This proves, by the way, that every weird thing that has ever happened in American politics eventually involves Roger Stone at some point. Alex Eisenstadt asked Robert, or whoever is answering this account, where did these documents come from? And the person responded, I suggest you don't be curious about where the other. I got them from any answer to this question will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing.

So those are the facts here, but then there's a media story built into this because the New York Times and the Washington Post also got documents. Journalists are in possession of what appeared to be stolen goods. Alan, does that remind you of any instances of American politics from the recent past? Yeah, in 2016, when the DNC. ass officials were hacked, John Podesta. These documents got leaked to WikiLeaks, and all the news organizations published really the gory details of it.

And what was interesting is that there was no real huge smoking gun, but it did really paint a picture of how the Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton campaign, was really like in turmoil. And it was newsworthy. a lot of people quibbled over sort of why these news organizations were publishing hacked documents, but they were stories. And it's really interesting now that all of a sudden these news organizations are kind of getting a little pious about it, especially now that it's been turned about and it's about Trump. And I do wonder the sort of wisdom of not pulling the trigger on these.

I can sort of see the worry that they're contributing to election interference, you know. You're doing the bidding of a state actor. Right, exactly, like Iran, if that's true. But, you know, every, I might be playing this down a little bit, but every source has access to grind. And I mean, the editors from these papers and news orgs are sort of saying that this stuff doesn't rise to newsworthiness. But I don't know. Maybe I'm being a conspiracy theorist, but I'm not quite sure I believe that. What's interesting because a lot of people have seized on what they see is the double standard between Trump, 2024 and Clinton, 2016.

Brian Boyler, who writes a substact called Off Message, says this. They can either hold Trump to the same standard as Clinton and cover the contents of his campaign's emails breathlessly, or for the first time in nearly a decade, they can be candid with their subscribers regarding their past failures. otherwise they will have chosen de facto to thumb the scales of our elections for Donald Trump. So what he's saying is you at least owe your readers an explanation of why 2024 is different than 2016. And if you want to make that distinction, because, and Boiler has this in his piece, there's a lot of very, speaking of pious quotes from 2016 saying, look, it would have been a mistake. It does violence to journalism not to publish.

Yeah. And it's interesting because there was a top editor who was quoted in a story saying that they had a no hacking policy. And again, but it didn't touch on 2016, then why did you do it in 2016? And I'm not sure it's hypocrisy. I mean, it could be them sort of, again, taking a breath. But these are top news people.

I think, you know, again, maybe they're worried about the hackers sort of taking the lead and letting them run wild. But these editors have good editorial judgment. I think that they have the ability to sort of select what's in these. and see what's newsworthy and publish it in a thoughtful way. The whole idea of purloined information and whether you should publish is fascinating to me.

So I was thinking about two things as looking at these stories. One of them is, so let's say you can't publish the documents you were sent, the emails you were sent. You decide, okay, we're drawing a bright line there. Stolen material doesn't go in the newspaper or on the website. Well, if you're a reporter, can you take the thing that you found out about in the purloin goods and follow those breadcrumbs back and report the story in and above the board way? It's really tricky because, you know, in journalism, you know, for listeners out there that actually, listeners of this podcast probably already know, but if you're a reporter and something is

is considered off the record, after the record, you're not supposed to then take that information and leverage it to somebody else. Yeah, like to go to someone else and try to confirm. it, but, you know, if you receive this stuff directly, yeah, I think it's fair game to be able to take it and then try to confirm it, which for all we know, maybe is happening. Right. So you can't publish it, but you can use it as a roadmap for things you might publish in the future, which is an interesting distinction, right? And if we're doing one of these mea culpa's or explanations, I'd sort of like to know that. Because it is.

I mean, if I was, there's some terrible scandal in Alan Siegel's past. It turns out, really does not like the movie Gremlin. He only claims to like the movie Gremlins in his ringer oral history. Well, can I go around and with this email that was stolen from you and ask your friends from college? Well, because I, thinking about this. I mean, I don't, I don't, you know, that's an interesting distinction. And I'm with you. I think journalists would probably, if you're handed this thing, well, here is the story, but you can't use this to publish a story. Who in their right mind is not going to then go try to get that through other means, again, through what we would consider to be more conventionally journalistic means. Right. And the problem is that things move so fast now that people want answers now. So this story could be developing for months and we might not know like what's going to come out for a while, but people want it now. I want it now. I mean, it's just the nature of the news cycle.

So also they were talking about that maybe the documents sent over by Robert. were not that interesting. Like it was a J.D. Vance document that was essentially a bunch of news articles clipped together, which is what those sort of vetting documents often are. And that's not worth publishing. And that, that to me is something else when news orgs explain their decisions that I'd really like to see. Because is it, you know, if you found like Trump emails that were delivered, not found, but they were delivered to you, let's say, by these people. And they said, you know, Susie Wiles is pissed off that Corey Lewandowski's coming back to the campaign. We look at that and go, oh, well, that's not that important. But if there was something truly important that Trump had done or that Trump was intending to do something that would, you felt was certainly like rose to this level of importance for your readers to know, is that a different decision tree? Now, the question is what is considered important? Right. I was reading about the pedesta hacks from 2016, and there were notes in there about

whether Hillary could make a joke about Donald Trump's hair and Trey Gowdy's hair. And these are gossipy little items that don't mean anything. But they're juicy and funny and weird, and the New York Times published them. So again, I do wonder if that's... that's the kind of stuff we're missing, in which case, maybe it's not worth publishing, but to say that this stuff isn't published is kind of wrong too. Yeah, and you said the Clinton, you know, they created this picture of the Clinton campaign in turmoil. It certainly looks like it's in turmoil if you publish every email like that,

or if you publish everybody being mad at everybody else, which is like, you know, not uncommon in a political campaign or a newsroom, I should add, if you just published everything. So anyway, when we get around to explain this, I'd like that. I would like to hear some answers to those questions. In non-political news, Alan, we're overdue here on the press box for a sports doc check-in. I felt a lot going on

over the last seven weeks. I haven't had a lot of time to watch football documentaries. So I caught up this week. Did you see how mad everybody was with hard knocks when it wasn't on HBO or excuse me, Max immediately on Tuesday evening? Oh, it was like if Succession didn't get uploaded onto Max,

it was, people were pissed. It's got to be good news for, for HBO and Max that people are still that bought into Hard Knocks as many years into the show. I watched the first two episodes, which are about the Chicago Bears, a very, very bad football franchise that now has a flicker of hope. Tell me what you enjoyed. I loved, enjoyed Leav Schreiber's familiar voice. I like the puns. Anyone in Chicago can take the L. What they really want are the Ws. That was a big, a big groaner. I liked Ray Clay, the old Bulls

announcer. That was cool. Was that done just for the It seemed that way. So he and they had the Alan Parsons project song Sirius, which was the Chicago is the Chicago Bulls. Warm up. So I was going to ask you, Brian, what household activity

would you want that song playing before to you know, get you revved up to do it? Everything. Especially washing dishes, especially anything that involved cleaning the house. I mean, that's why we all put, you know, headphones in and listen to some to fire me up music when we're doing the most menial chore imaginable.

I think it's for me, it's like stretching before I play tennis to make sure, just to fire me up for not, you know, pulling my hamstring for sure. The overheards on hard knocks are pretty fun. There was one with two players and one of them was talking about the pet ferret that he co-owned.

We're going to get to pet ownership here in a second, but he co-owned with another. football player. Another one about Roma Dunzei, who's their number one draft pick wide receiver and the stuff he wears on his arms and Caleb Williams has given him some stuff about that. And it was incredibly heartwarming to see Jonathan Owens, Simone Biles, husband, just talking about her at home, watching her perform and or compete rather and also FaceTime with her. and talk about their dogs. And it was just the most sort of wholesome thing

I've ever seen in my life. And they had the competitive rope climb that she just smoked him in. He was like, I'm going to climb a rope faster than my wife. Oh, wait. And he said, I remember him saying, yeah, I had to stay in my lane there, you know. Jonathan Owens turned out to be a really big get. It was also fun to see him stand up and address the entire Bears team and be like, hey, my wife just won a number of gold medals.

I got back from Paris because he was allowed to take a little trip over there and watcher. What was funny about this particular edition of Hard Knocks is Caleb Williams is the number one draft pick quarterback of the Bears. Caleb Williams is like a huge figure in the NFL already, even though he has not played a regular season snap. But he hasn't talked very much. Lincoln Riley, who was his coach at Oklahoma and then his coach at USC, they both went over there together, protected him from the press a lot. You know, a lot of interesting things about Caleb Williams, from just the way he handled himself as a quarterback, to the way his dad got involved in some of the track negotiations before the draft.

There was all this report. Like, does he want a piece of a franchise that drafted him? Are they going to try to blow up the whole NFL rookie salary scale? So we've learned a lot about him and seen a lot about him. But we haven't heard him talk that much. So that was one of the things I was looking forward to. And then I start watching the show. And I'm like, oh, my God, they got more buy-in from Simone Biles than they got from

Caleb Williams. We see her face-timing. But the only Caleb-William stuff we see is basically the overheard stuff on the sidelines are him in the coach's office with Matt Eberflus. So I'm going to like push back on that a little bit. Now, I of course would like to hear him speak directly to the camera. But I think it was Richard Ben Kramer said this, the writer, that you don't necessarily want to be the person interviewing a subject.

You want to be the person observing the subject doing something. And I think it was fascinating to see Caleb Williams interact. with Matt Iberflust, the coach. I think it was interesting, see him get up in front of the team and talk about his signing bonus. That was funny. And everybody, like, he seemed like a good sport. Everyone was heckling him, throwing shit at him.

Again, he seemed like a good sport. And I don't, I think that that's a little more insightful than an interview sometimes. And that's hilarious coming from me who's always sort of talking and whining about wanting more access to people. Yeah. No, you're right. Like, it was interesting to see him. a leader at all times

like every fist that was anywhere near Caleb Williams was bumped like he was always like patting people on the back you know chatting up his wide receivers there was some cool stuff where he was talking about

how they should run routes and what they should look for because there's this big period where they're trying to get used to him throwing the ball and maybe that is more enlightening than him sitting around a fire pit which needs to be the go-to

of hard knocks the big star here was Theo Benedet undrafted offensive lineman from Canada. The second round draft pick in the CFL is zero round pick in the NFL. And he goes up before the team to sing karaoke, which is something you do when you're an NFL rookie.

And he decides to sing Lee Greenwood's God bless the USA. And the key moment, he rips off his pants and he's wearing a thong with an eagle right on the crotch. And the bears go absolutely wild. Because he's Canadian, first of all. Because he's Canadian. He's Canadian. There's some irony laced in this.

And I think this is so obvious, but what Hard Knocks is incredible at is finding characters. And this big dude who is willing to do that in front of people, they knew that this has got to focus on that right away. And it's funny because you see him in the first preseason game getting injured. And maybe like a lesser show would sort of be like, okay, he's done for a while. but they cut back to him going up in front of his teammates again, and he's talking about how he was interviewed by People magazine, and everybody thought that that was hilarious. So they knew to, like, put the button on the joke, you know.

I loved it. I didn't expect that I would like it so much. I think it's a great combo, again, of characters and craft. And I think a lot of sports documentaries don't hit that as well as they should. Like, one of my favorite parts of The Last Dance, the Bulls documentary, was Dennis Rodman, you know, not talking about partying, but talking about rebound and how he did it and how he sort of learned how to do it and why he was great at it. And it kind of reminded me of Amon Ross St. Brown talking about taking 200 catches from the Jugs machine. And again, this is a job

for them. And that's what I want to see, like what makes them great. These docs have totally replaced magazine features in that respect, the how to thing. I mean, I remember that when we first started getting the boom of like just, you know, cable channel comfort food docs like ice truckers. I would watch it and be like, oh my God, ice trucker would have been a great story, right? Alan and Brian writing in the cab, taking down, you know, writing about the life of this guy or, you know, the fishing ones and all that stuff. Like that's something you'd want to. It's like the back of the book story in Esquire that now all goes to TV. Yeah, exactly.

When you talk about craft, it's really very much that on receiver. So when I used to dream about doing magazine piece, I'd be like, oh, man, I want to get Dorel Rivas on a football field and just have him teach me how to play cornerback. I don't understand how to play cornerback. And I don't think many people do. And so having someone who's an expert at it, who's a great NFL player, tell you. But these docs, and there are too many of them, they get tedious after a while, the Bears one. oh my god there was so much filler in the first two episodes of hard knocks when they're at their

best they can give you a glimpse of how these guys do their thing right it's about specificity it's like getting into these very minute details about their history about how they do their jobs and you mentioned george kittle there was one detail about george kittle that was hilarious to us especially from you know as people that grew up in the 90s you see was seeing the counting crows hit hanging around, which I looked up, you think he was like six years old when that song came out, but was playing over the PA and he just knew all the lyrics. Yeah, and the thing with Kittle, that was a great example of like his sort of endearing hyperactivity. Like this is a guy who, you know, Tidon is not really considered like a cerebral position.

And I think he clearly has some brains, but, you know, his sort of wildness is what probably makes him great. And him singing that song out of the blue was most importantly hilarious. Yeah, he's sticking his tongue out at the wire cam when it comes over him. I mean, that's George Kittle. By the way, I thought when I watched Theo Benedet singing, God Bless the USA to the Bears, you notice that some of the bears knew all the lyrics to the song. I was like, there is a fault line in the Bears locker room. Do you know the lyrics to God bless the USA?

Are you kind of like nodding along going, uh-huh, uh-huh? Sure. That was pretty good. Alan, every once in a while we get a clip that explains the essence of cable news or maybe especially the essence of CNN. Caitlin Collins, you've Caitlin Collins fan? Absolutely. Caitlin Collins was on Colbert on Monday talking about the election, talking about CNN. And what started out as an olive branch from Colbert became a little bit of an awkward moment.

Somebody's kind of been thrown on his heels by this. and he's not really sure how to go after Vice President Harris. He knew his attack lines on President Biden. He really has struggled with how to go after someone who's 20 years younger than him, who is a different gender, a different race. It's kind of been this moment where he has not been able to coalesce around a single attack line. I know you guys are objective over there that you just report the news as it is. Oh, I know CNN makes a...

Is that supposed to be a laugh line? I wasn't supposed to be, but I guess it is. CNN insert laughter. That was so funny because I think a lot of that was Stephen Colbert's just sincere insincerity. Sounds like he's doing the Stephen Colbert character. What are you guys just report the news right down the middle over there in CNN? But a lot of it to me when I heard that, of course, that rocketed around right-wing Twitter, was just what a failure Chris Licks whole plan.

to try to depoliticize CNN was. Remember, he came in there and was like, we just got two resistance, we got too lefty, we got to be BBC America without the imprimatur of the BBC or the cool accents. We got to just call it down the middle

and there were a lot of problems with that. But one of the problems was, in this day and age, nobody is going to believe you anyway. So you might as well just do the most interesting newscast you can and let your anchor go because they're still going to laugh at you in the Colbert audience, even if you spend years

trying to quote and quote, get it down the middle. No one watches cable news for paint by numbers, nuts and bolts reporting. They want voice, they want slant. Otherwise, they'll watch PBS News Hour, which I like. But again, it's sort of like cable news is sort of post-objectivity, like a lot of news. media maybe? Yeah. Or it's just, I mean, I think, look, look, I think you can be fair and, you know, objective is an interesting word, but like it can be fair and vigorous and interesting without being boring and without trying to please everyone at one time because you just never wind

up pleasing anybody. And that's what CNN was doing. And you still see it in their ratings. I mean, you look at it. You're just like, no, no, no, you just go out, attack the stories. You see, think the story should be attacked. And then we'll call it a day and put on a good television show. right it's sort of like the most defensive thing is that it's boring it's not it's not that it's down the middle yeah it's television i mean that's the whole that's the whole point anyway that's that that laugh sent me back to the chris licked era

we have an important essay in new york magazine and it's about cats new york magazine i talked about this with Amanda daubbins a while back has become the factory for the strangest and most readable essays on planet Earth. They churn them out. I'm not somebody who is attracted

like a moth to a flame to such essays, but I read more of these than I would have guessed. The new issue of New York has a humanoid creature on the cover that looks like James Corden in the movie cats behind this thing that looks either like a window or prison

bars. Or a little bit like a live action Bojack Horseman character. Yeah, that's even better. there is one essay by Mary Gateskill, and it is about her cat named, or a former cat perhaps at this point, because this story takes place in the distant past, named Suki. She was living in New York when she adopted Suki from basically the street, found Suki underneath a parked car. And there was this whole New York real estate thing of, hey, do I have a big enough apartment

to really make a pet happy. Answer is no in almost any case. But she adopts Suki and then got into this very, how would you describe the relationship between cat and owner? I would say at least toxic and potentially abusive. Yeah, here's some lines from the story. I got up and yelled at her, then tossed her into the bathroom and closed the door.

Another time, Gatesgo writes, I was especially desperate to sleep and she was especially desperate to charge around the room. I so lost my temper that I actually slapped her, causing her to race up into the space above my closet to hide. Well, Gateskill and Suki forged kind of an uneasy piece. They moved together to Marin County out here in California. And then Gateskill does something that to Suki is unforgivable.

She adopts a kitten that she names Honus. I don't know if she's really into valuable old baseball cards or what, but she adopts this kitten. And then this story, which is, again, let me emphasize incredibly readable. Just every word of this I devoured in one sitting becomes kind of like a Garfield comic strip where Suki is very, very jealous of Honus. It doesn't attack Honus, but hisses and hisses at Gateskill for adopting the younger cat. Suki winds up attacking a cat skitter, attacking Gateskill herself. Gateskill tells the cat in one memorable instance,

if you really hurt me, I am going to kill you. And then she faces what is kind of the peg of the story, should I take this cat, which is not behaving with me anymore, to the ASPCA for adoption, but really no one's probably going to adopt this cat. So this would mean a death sentence for Suki. A trip to the farm.

A trip to the farm. This is kind of the whole. hook it's based on not since it's so it's not just funny stories with my cat who got a little crazy at times it's like oh my gosh i'm holding this animal's life in my hands like this has become uncomfortable for me it's become at least mildly dangerous for me if i'm getting scratched i have to make a decision what do i do so a friend tells gates go i hope you reconsider you're really mad at suki right now but you love her if you take her there and she's put down i don't think you're going to be able to live with yourself.

So I don't know if we should say spoiler alert here like Chris and Andy do. They have a particularly juicy episode of a TV series. But Gatesco winds up giving away the kitten honus. And then all of a sudden, Suki's behavior changes. Suki becomes friendly. She then put her headbag down side and stretched her forepaw out on my leg, gripping my pants with her claws as if to say mine, all mine. What an unbelievable story.

It's an unbelievable piece of writing and also just wild that, like, for Mary Gateskill to write that and keep her byline on it is pretty brave, considering if you show any vulnerability on the internet, you will get attacked. And that's sort of what's happened. I mean, there is New York Mag in the cut. They, they've sort of perfected this formula of personal essay. which is you take a relatable experience. Okay. So in this case, it would be unruly pet. And then you take an extreme example of this experience,

which is being in a true toxic relationship with this pet, you add those two things and you get a viral story. And they are so good at it. And there's some element of confession that has to be present, right? Like the woman who gave away all her money or gave away a bunch of money to the guy on the street. The shoebox. In the shoe box. You have to have a moment where you're doing.

something and people were like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm reading this in print. In this case, probably, you know, giving a little physical with cat. Right. You have to admit something that you sort of know will get you criticized. And that's tough. And there, it's a lot less funny if you think about it. I was looking at an aggregated list of the top 20 personal essays or confessional essays. And all of them were written by women. And there's definitely an exploitative part of this that has been covered a lot, which is, you know, it opens people up. It opens women up to the internet and horrible criticism that's not always valid.

It's very obvious. And it's pretty ugly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I got to tell you, I'm sort of against pet essays. Just as a matter, of course. Really, all pet talk online, whenever I see those tweets about, who the dog is a good boy. like, please leave my timeline forever.

I just do not have that attachment to pets. So me reading the hell out of the story is an endorsement and a half. Let me tell you something. We have a breaking of silence, Alan. There's a lot of things that are called a breaking of silence. It really aren't. This comes to us from alert listener, Stephen Rottis. Rachel Gunn, whom you might remember from the Summer Olympics as Ray Gunn,

the Australian break dancer, has brought. broken her silence. Taken to Instagram, the New York Post says, to address some of the criticism here is a little of Raygun's breaking of silence. I just want to start by thanking all the people who have supported me. I really appreciate the positivity, and I'm glad I was able to bring some joy into your lives.

That's what I hoped. I didn't realize that that would also open the door. to so much hate, which has frankly been pretty devastating. Well, I went out there and I had fun. I did take it very seriously. I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics, and I gave my all, truly.

So that's Raygun. That feels like a fairly legit breaking of silence, doesn't it not? It does, and again, Raygun was a great example of a story that started so harmlessly and so funny. Just people posting videos of her sort of goofy routine and making memes out of them. Yeah, me when I... Yeah, or one was, you know, like, what my nephew says after he tells us to watch this, it's just her dancing.

But again, like everything, it gets, like, there's sort of a dark side to it that comes out. And yeah, it sort of sat that it then would necessitate breaking of the silence. Did you see that TMZ story where they called one of the stars of the movie Breaking from the 80s to weigh in on break dancing at the Olympics? I thought of you when I saw that. It's like kind of a genius one call story. I don't know if Andrew Greta-Dar was on the phone with you. Like, why the hell didn't we have this? You know things are getting real when the experts start getting called.

And I mean, it's just, again, it's so funny. it is a product of taking this art form and like making it a competitive thing. It's like, what the hell do you think is going to happen? It's, it's Raygun is what's going to happen. One more subject for you. The New York Times is not going to be making endorsements in local political races anymore. The paper reports about itself here does not plan to take a stance in Senate, congressional, or state legislative races in New York this fall or in next year's New York City elections.

tellingly, the New York Times is still going to endorse for president. So on the one hand, this is the story you and I have seen play out over the last couple years, which is the New York Times, is not even notionally a local paper. It's a national paper or an international paper. And it sees the subscribers it's chasing as whortle-loving folks who live somewhere between the five boroughs and Sydney, Australia. Fair to say? Absolutely. So that's part of it.

think as just a reader of this kind of stuff, especially here in LA, newspaper endorsements and local races are incredibly helpful. This giant California ballot all the time. And you look at it and be like, who are these people and what do they do? Especially for me as a New Angelino. Like I have only been here a few years and I rely on that kind of coverage. And it is sort of just another sad example of local coverage across the country just being gutted. I mean, New York Times is one of the biggest papers in the country or the world and the most flush. And it just feels like there are going to be readers who are neglected. Maybe their local paper has closed or just isn't around anymore. Then it's losing this important service. Yeah, it is really service journalism.

So you're going to have wire cutter, which will tell you what TV to buy, what down jacket to buy. We're not going to have the people who work in opinion telling you or giving a a recommendation on what races to vote for. And by the way, you don't even take their recommendation, but at least a lot of those outline the issues, right? Talk about why this person over that person, which is really helpful. Because, again, I think a lot of people don't know who these people are. They may not even know what they do.

And it's one of those things. You mentioned their flush. Part of what being flush gives you the chance to do is to continue to do stuff like this, which may be thankless for the bottom line, but is an actual service to your New York-based readers. Right. It's sort of an extension of the times no longer covering the New York sports teams on a daily basis. Like you're losing valuable, not only are you losing sort of interesting articles or interesting stories, it's like their finger is no longer on the pulse of these things.

And that's bad. I think that does happen, right? You float free a little bit. You see this with the athletic as it moves from a lot of beat writers to a lot of feature writers. you just start to lose the pulse of things sometimes when you don't have people chewing up innings on the ground like that. I also think, look, staff-written editorials at the New York Times or any paper are pretty useless.

But it's very ironic to me that the staff of the New York Times would thunder about democracy, but not help you navigate it by helping you vote or giving you recommendations about who to vote for in these local races. Right, because these national endorsements, like, they're everywhere. There's a lot of them. That's all we read. Everything is a national. And now they're just, they're missing something that people probably can't get anywhere else.

All right. Last thing, Alan, we have a little feature here at the press box called Only in Journalism, where we like to highlight words that you never hear in human speech, but you always read in news articles. I understand you've prepared a little only in journalism supplement for the readers here. So my wife, Julie, was going through some of my old articles to see which words I used. I was trying to keep them more on feature writing. So these are only in feature story. Yeah, or a lot of them are in sort of feature stories.

So one of them that kept coming up in my stories was someone is not criticized. They are skewered. That's a good one. and you know you you don't go to a place often you frequent that place one of those awful words frequent i'm guilty i just it's so easy to just say he went there all the time yes exactly um and you don't criticize someone you excoriate them so if you're not skewering you're excoriating and if you if you go to a nice neighborhood uh you know it's not just affluent or upscale it's it's tony maybe i use that in my speech but i was going to say tony is that when you've

visit the celebrity at home, lived in the Tony Hollywood Hills area. And maybe not in L.A., but a lot of Tony neighborhoods are also leafy. Oh, that's good. Yeah, and if it's in L.A. and it's leafy, you know, you've come to, you know, a more prosperous area, let us say. And I would say my last one is if, like, people are sort of joined together or two things are sort of stuck together. They're not just that.

They're inextricable. Ooh, inextricable. And maybe again, I try to incorporate that into my speech to try to sound smart. I'm working on a story right now, so let me just make a few edits while you sit there sly. All right, Alan Siegel, he is inextricable from the pop culture, oral history at the Ringer and beyond. Alan, thanks for coming on the press box. My pleasure. Thanks, Brian. All right, it's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Monday's headline about the U.S. men's basketball. team beating France for the gold was awe as in A.U the symbol for gold. Ravois. Today's headline comes from listener Dan Perkle. It's from Scribner.

That's right. It's a book title. A decade old book title, but what the hell? This book is right up your alley, David. The subtitle is the story of dungeons and dragons and the people who play it. See, that's what you were doing instead of going out for the football team

over in high school. that's that's one episode ago it's a real recallback but yes you're right um so think of that one of the key tools you need to play old school d and d as you ponder what was scribbner's strained pun book title first of all this is really embarrassing because i probably own this book or at least picked it up and i kind of wondered that uh it's yeah so the standard uh it's it's a die or a dice so dice um dice uh dice uh it's just about people who play thirons and dragons yeah let's think of uh titles of great novels of dice and men wow i didn't even have to say john steinbeck's name of dice and men today's strained pun book title that is the press box i'm brian curtis

by bryan waters i want to a tease one final time our a press box meet and greet. It's going to be Sunday, August 18th. That is this Sunday in Chicago, Illinois. If you live in Chicago, or if you're going to be there for the DNC, I would love you to come by 3 p.m. Central Time on Sunday. It's at the crushed by Giants Brewing Company on Michigan Avenue.

You don't need RSVP. You don't need a ticket. Just come by and say hello. And I may have a press box campaign button. Press Box 24. Alan is sitting here jealously coveting his own press box campaign button.

I'll have one of those designed by David Shoemaker for you. If you come by, I'd love to see you. Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media and then a whole week of fun stuff from the DNC. Have a great week.