The Press Box - The Tom Brady Doc, Fox Resignations, and Who’s “on Steroids”

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Bryan and David discuss the new Tom Brady documentary ‘Man in the Arena,’ and break down the athlete-produced doc, the new sports memoir, and Scottie Pippen’s response to ‘The Last Dance’ in his new book (4:42). Then, they touch on commentator and writers Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quitting Fox News due to Tucker Carlson’s upcoming documentary about January 6 (22:15) before wrapping things up with another media piss test (35:34). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Head into the Ringiverse to stay up to date with all things superheroes and nerd culture entertainment. Hosted by a rotating lineup of superfans at The Ringer, including Mallory Rubin and Van Lathen, shows will provide instant reactions to blockbuster releases, insightful backstories on canon, and mind-bending theories, as well as fresh takes on the latest news and rumors. Check out The Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Season 2 of the prestige? Drama The Morning Show has just concluded. What I want to know is, do you watch the morning show?

I have watched the morning show. I watch the morning show mostly secondhand. My wife is a morning show watcher. I'm not quite sure where it ranks on her must-watch list, but she does seem to be caught up with it. I've enjoyed what I've seen. I've, like, it's a, it's a, you know, it feels like a prestige drama. And, you know, it's, I like the actors.

that are in it never. But one thing that's really bizarre about the show, though, I realize, I must have watched more than I thought I have, or maybe more importantly, secondhand watched more than I thought I had. Because I've, I've like, I know logically this isn't true, but subconsciously, I realize I believe that Steve Correll is canceled. Like Steve Carroll's character on the show is like Matt Lauer or whatever, like he gets canceled, he goes off to Greece or Italy, wherever the hell he is. and he's still a presence on the show. But I realize now that every time I see a Hollywood reporter article about the Steve Carell's new movie that he's lining up or the new TV show he signed off on, I'm just sitting there thinking like, that's a little bit soon, Steve, don't you think? Are we ready to forgive? Yeah. They'd be really going through all of the necessary apology or whatever.

No, it's the atonement. No, Steve Carell, as far as I know, is not canceled just for the record. But the show must be really good if it is somehow like just totally seduced my subconscious into thinking that Steve Carell is canceled. And by the way, kudos to the uncanceled Steve Karell for taking on a role. This must have been part of the calculus, right? Everyone's going to think of the canceled, all the canceled white men of the past couple years. And they're going to now see Steve, think of Steve Karel. So, you know, it's a, well, he plays the par well.

That's not, don't mean that as an insult. He's a good actor. Can we come up with a whole category of media, TV shows, books and everything for stuff that we should watch or should have read that we opted out of and not for a great reason? Well, you mean like specifically this show because this could have been a segment on our podcast. Absolutely. I could have one of the actors on the podcast. But usually with me, this is a sports book and everybody's like, how man, did you read that? And I'm like, no, I didn't get a chance to read it.

Hey, at least you're honest about it. I mean, I think most people would be like, yeah, it was great, huh? You know, and then like, let me excuse myself to the bathroom and quickly Google a review of it. Through the vague. Yeah, it was amazing, wasn't it? Yeah. I was blown away. Absolutely.

That's another category. It's like, did you read the, whatever, the basketball memoir? And you're like, yeah, it was fantastic. Let me pivot quickly to the Zach Lowe podcast interview on the subject that I wanted, you know, that I did actually pay attention to. Yeah, yeah, there should be a whole category for these things. I feel like all, if we all, like every human being alive today probably feels simultaneously, like there's not enough things that we, that are out there for us to watch at any given moment, but there's an entire sea of things that we feel like obligated and not even like a work obligation sense.

Like a, like that's a thing that in theory I would enjoy to watch. And yet, it just, we don't watch it. And it's just a weight on us that just is hanging out there. So yeah, there should be a category for this. I'm sure there's a witty, punny name that someone listening to this can come up with for that sort of thing. At the press box spot, if you think of anything.

Coming up on today's show, we talk about the new Tom Brady documentary on ESPN. Two commentators have left Fox News and we test drive our new bit. Media Piss Test. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis

and David Shoemaker here. along with producer Erica Servantes. Some event television for us sports people last week, David. Last Tuesday, ESPN premiered its new documentary series about Tom Brady. It's called Man in the Arena. First question, how much money would you and I Venmo to the journalism gods right now to never hear the Teddy Roosevelt Man in the Arena quote ever again? Yeah, that would be great.

I mean, it's a good quote. It's just one of those things. Of course it's a good quote. That's why people have used it. Over and over and over. Constantly. And by the way, we're as media podcast, so it's probably not in the arena, so to speak. We're the people Teddy Roosevelt was talking about.

That's true. I'm a little sensitive. Man in the arena, David, is a kind of sequel to last year's Michael Jordan documentary, the last dance. As with Jordan, Tom Brady is a producer, co-producer of the thing. He is also a Jordan-level star, which makes us something of an event. I wanted to hit you with this first. I feel like for my entire life, your entire life, at least the last 20 years, we've been hearing about athletes taking over the media.

They're going to tweet instead of answering our questions in a press conference. They're going to write the Players Tribune article instead of letting us sit down and write a magazine story about them. All true, though that stuff felt pretty marginal. I got to say the player-produced sports documentary, which is also about the player, is one thing that feels like it's just blotting out the sun right now. Yeah, it seems like when the Jordan documentary came out, we talked about it as a sort of, you know, like the latest in a line. It was another, it was another sort of symptom of what, you know, what was going on in sports media and particularly documentary, you know, the documentary form. But it does seem like it was also more of a sort of inception point than we realized. We couldn't have realized at the time.

But it does seem like you called this a sequel. You called the Brady doc a sequel to it. And it really is. It just seems like the Jordan documentary happened for a variety of reasons. And it sort of, you know, came into existence. And then I'm sure both the people at ESPN and other networks, I mean, other platforms, everything else and athletes on that level or approaching that level all sort of pointed at it and said, oh, we can do that too.

So it was like a lot of things that came before, but on the level of star involvement and the celebrity of the star, and I think frankly, just like, just sort of getting over the, I mean, and I don't say this with, you know, any sort of positivity inherent, but sort of getting over the hump of that percentage, perception gap, right? Like, is it, can a kind of documentary made by the person who it's about be the quintessential documentary about that person, right? And the answer was, well, I mean,

you know, your mileage may vary, but yes, I mean, that's how that's how the last dance will always be perceived. Absolutely. We should probably bracket here that the ringer has done documentaries sort of in this general vein before. Oh, yeah. But I do think, I know, and listen, we've done, we've done this and everybody's done this. And I'm not, this isn't really a morality, argument at all. But maybe, I mean, no, I'm missing. I mean, there's a million examples to the contrary. But it does seem like there's a distinction between, like, you know, Steve Nash does a

documentary series on his last season, you know, and he's involved and he's narrating the whole thing. And, like, it's sort of like a memoir, you know, and that set aside the quintessential, like, Ken Bernsian documentary on the subject. But that also, I mean, like, that being. produced by the subject is, you know, that would have been weird if, you know, Ken Burns a Civil War had been produced by Stonewall Jackson or me. I don't believe he was in the IMDB credits of that particular documentary. You're right, where you have the violins and the big

production values and also not just the subject talking, but all the subjects teammates and friends talking and journalists coming in and talking in the subject slash athlete produced documentary. I think part of the power of this, and you just hit on this, is that this is kind of an itchy question. You know, just like, you're right. As a viewer, am I believing, you know, am I not believing this? But am I, you know, am I taking all of this at face value if the person this is about basically had sign off on this thing? But the thing is, dude, I think because it's a documentary, because the production values are so high and the people who are making it are so talented. that in a way you forget that the person is producing it.

The athlete is producing it. And I think the athlete is happy to have you forget that they're producing it. Yeah. I think that I agree with you to an extent. I also, but I do think that there's, you know, the platforms, the producers, the directors, they might be happy for you to forget that.

I think that there's a lot of people involved, starting with the athletes, I think there's a lot of people involved in these productions that don't care what you think of it. And that, I mean, as far as that goes, right? As far as like, whatever, journalistic ethics goes.

They're making their thing, you know? And I do think that there's, I mean, obviously, if you could have one or the other, I think we would probably all pick the same thing. And to compare these sorts of operations, I mean, these sorts, operations is the right thing. These sorts of productions to, you know, memoirs or authorized biographies or whatever else.

It's, you know, I mean, there's, we're talking about varying degrees of artistry on the, on the part of the subject, right? But it's not, it's not like there's no tradition for this, right? I mean, it's not like there's, it's not like this is just some sort of modern contrivance, except for a little bit the platform. I mean, a little bit the format. that. It's, but it is, it is itchy to say the least. I agree. I think it, I think we said this during the Jordan doc. It's the new sports memoir to me. It has in a way, we're still going to get sports memoirs because there's still an opportunity there. There's still money to be made from that. But this in a way has replaced the sports memoir for a lot of athletes. Michael Jordan never

wrote a proper memoir. Tom Brady hasn't written one. He's written the, you know, diet, you know, lifestyle guru kind of stuff, but he hasn't done like, here is my life story. Sure. But they've produced documentaries. And we could say that like, you know, this is a moment right now because streamers are desperate to get stuff and they're paying for stuff. At the same time, athletes all want to be producers. I noticed Tom Brady started a production company last year.

Yeah. And they won in on content, television, streaming stuff about themselves, but also in the case of somebody like LeBron James, they just want in on it, period. So everything is conspiring to say, oh, you know, you want to write a book? Okay, maybe.

But what you really want, where you're going to get the most bang for your buck is to do a documentary about yourself. Yeah. And again, with talented filmmakers, really good production values, a vehicle like ESPN or Netflix to really push it out there, that's where you're going to hit.

something right now. Yeah. And then you do the book in a few years too. The incomplete list dude of people of athletes who have gone down this road semi recently. Colin Kaepernick, Kevin Garnett, Russell Westbrook very recently. If you go back to this fall, Germain O'Neill did this Malice in the Palace documentary, which was on Netflix.

Really interesting, kind of trying to less a life story than trying to recast this event that we all saw and kind of. make you think about it in a different way. Yeah, I mean, I think you can say for whatever, I mean, whatever the overarching argument is, that malice in the palace documentary, what mini documentary, whatever, I think sort of stands on its own. I think that there's a lot of defense you can make of that, even in the, you know, if you take the harshest point of view.

But, but yes, that's definitely part of the group. Yeah, and I wouldn't look. I'm not cast, I don't think any of this is indefensible because like you said, there's been this thing called the sports memoir out there for ever. And that we and that we are really a lot of sports memoirs are really good of we certainly Deify the subset of like great sports memoirs above most sports writing, right? I mean, those are that's that's part of I mean the sports journalism canon includes these very biased memoirs.

The one that really got me the other day was Scotty Pippen. Scottie Pippen has an actual book out. he went the old school way. He wrote a memoir that has just come out. And there was this GQ excerpt. I'm going to read you just a little bit of it. The text was for Michael, meaning Michael Jordan. He didn't reach out very often.

What's up, dude? I'm getting word that you're upset with me. Love to talk about it if you have time. Dot, dot, dot, dot. Michael was right, Scotty Pippin writes. I was upset with him. It was because of the last dance, the 10-part ESPN documentary, dot, dot, dot, dot.

The documentary glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates. Michael deserved a large portion of the blame. The producers had granted him editorial control the final product. The doc couldn't have been released. Otherwise, he was the leading man and the director. Now, just think about this for a second, David, because we're all like, ooh, Michael versus Scotty injected into my veins.

This is awesome. There's also a media story here, which is that Scotty Pippet is using his chosen vehicle as a corrective to Michael Jordan's chosen vehicle. He's using a book to correct a documentary. Yeah. I love it. That's hilarious to me. Yeah.

And I mean, I love that if you just read that to me, if you read that to me, it didn't tell me what it's about and changed the names and everything else. I could have still told you it was a sports memoir. I mean, part of it's just the, you know, familiar the familiar tune of a sports memoir,

but it's also so inflected by the Players Tribune at this point, where it's like this very sort of like, like, well-written, but like overly direct, overly precise, overly, I don't know. This is very sort of like keyed up version of the way that a person would talk, which is the best way to read it. It's almost like relies less on the sports memoirs of like our adulthoods and more on the sports memoirs that, that, you know, we're in our, like, middle school libraries, sort of.

But, and I don't mean that as an insult. It's, like, just very direct and urgent in a way that really makes you, makes it easy to read, you know, 300 pages. So, you know, it's, that part of it's just amazing. But yeah, it's, I mean, I don't know if we need to get into, like, documentary versus book, like the forum argument or whatever, but it is hilarious that, you know, he's taking exception to the way this, the way that the last dance was. put out and he's got an even

you know he's got his own platform with probably even less pushback. Yeah, I don't even uh, I don't remember sports memoirs having pull quotes that direct. Yeah. Right. You're reading like page after page

trying to find some friction or trying to find something really fantastically interesting other than like Jose Canseco's book or something. Yep. I mean that is like here is the folks, here's the excerpt. Yeah. I want you to print this. And by the way,

Scotty Pippin is right. The last dance was comically Michael-centric. It was, it was, it was sold as the Bulls thing, but it was, it was Michael Jordan's memoir.

That's what it was. Remember that he was Michael Jordan in the documentary got mad at Scottie Piffin for pushing back a surgery because it was going to hurt the Bulls? And then Michael just quit the Bulls and left. You just left. You went to pull.

played baseball and that was this, well, it's a tough decision for me as an athlete. Oh, but your surgery, oh, that was just a complete, that was a complete shunning of the team. Yeah, absolutely. It was hysterical. This was the, you know, justifiably big topic of conversation

at the time, too, because it just seemed so unnecessary, not just unnecessary in the context of telling a story about the Bulls, like, why are we focusing on this piece when it should be a sort of, it could be just a lot of Tory thing about the whole team or whatever. But yeah, it just like, like Michael Jordan didn't have to do this, right? He didn't have to do this project. He'd read like you said, he hasn't written a book. There hasn't,

there hasn't been Jordan's side of things so long. And it's just sort of like, I think it's a little bit mind-boggling to anybody watching that like of all of the things that he wanted to go in on during like a 10-hour wide-ranging interview. It's just Scotty Pippen as a teammate. I mean, that seems like it should be the easiest, like most non-controversial part of the entire interview. And as we said a second ago, the weirdness is Scotty Pippin is in the documentary. Yeah. If Michael had written a memoir, you wouldn't open to chapter four. And it's like, and here's Scotty Pippin talking for a few pages about like how great Michael Jordan is.

Like, Scotty Pippen was part of the presentation that actually depicted Scotty, at least partially in an unflattering light. Exactly. That's the weirdness of the, of the athlete document. It's not just Michael Jordan talking to a camera like an Errol Morris thing, which, by the way, would be there for that. I would be there for that too. That sounds great. But you're bringing in your teammates to help you tell your story, which is just a very, very interesting bit. Anyway, David, let's do the Overward 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 where they are always, always gratefully received. David, I know you saw this story. The Staples Center out here in L.A., home to the Lakers, clippers, kings, and sparks is changing its name.

It's going to be the crypto.com arena. Crypto.com arena. It was an overwork Twitter joke to post a picture of a staple remover. Thanks to Travis Barnett. By the way, Candace Buckner had an amazing story in the Washington Post where she talked about the nostalgia for corporate names. Oh, yeah. We used to be nostalgic for the pre-corporate name, but we've come along at this age where everything was a corporate name.

So now we're nostalgic for the old corporate name. Right. Well, in a lot of cases, names that we didn't even register as being corporate, right? Like, if you would ask me, it would have said, oh, yeah, Staples must be that office supply chain. But it's not like when you, every time I heard Staples Center, I had like a Pavlovian urge to go by paper clips. This was Paul George and Buckner's story. I grew up with this being Staples. And Staples being the place to play and the place to be dot, dot, dot.

It's kind of like just stripping the history here by calling it something else. True. Staples Center. In other news, David, last Monday night, the L.A. Rams got blown out by the San Francisco 49ers. And Lions turned Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford was not good. He threw two AINTs. He finished with a 34.7 QBR.

It was a very overworked Twitter joke to say that you can take the boy out of the lions, but you can't take the lions out of the boy. Thanks to John Gets. And this week's runaway winner, an article, David, about Queen Elizabeth the second came out last week. I believe it originated

on MSN, UK. It quoted a royals expert. By the way, should we do a pod how to be a royals expert? Please. Noting that the 95-year-old queen doesn't have much on our schedule these days,

won't be doing much until next year. And here's the kicker, has, quote, entered a new phase. entered a new phase, Queen Elizabeth. A lot of good jokes. Huge get for Zuckerberg in the metaverse. Why are they talking about the queen

like she's a Pokemon? And my favorite, posting any illustration from Franz Kafka's metamorphosis. The queen's new phase. Thanks to our friends, Nick Field and Ken Barrett, if you imagine season 9,000 of the

crown. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. In the notebook dump, David, I want to talk to you about some stuff going on over at Fox News. You'll remember the Fox News, Fox Nation Tucker Carlson documentary about the

January 6th siege of the capital. You'll also remember it was called Patriot Purge suggested the U.S. government is turning the war on terror on its own conservative citizens. Well, the New York Times has Ben Smith has a column about the fall out. I'll read you to the top of it. The trailer for Carlson special about the January 6th

of the Capitol landed online on October 27th. And that night, Jonah Goldberg, conservative commentator and writer, sent a text to his business partner, Stephen Hayes, also a conservative commentator and writer, quote, I'm tempted just to quit Fox over this. I'm game, Mr. Hayes replied, totally outrageous. It will lead to violence, not sure how we can stay. And indeed, they have quit Fox News over the Tucker Carlson documentary. Both are founders of the dispatch, the online non-Trump conservative thing founded that two years ago. What do we think of Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes walking on account of the Tucker Carlson doc? well um one can understand where they're coming from right i mean i think that there's definitely some

a chorus on the trumpy right or just the kind of contrarian right in general that's like it'll say you know well let me start with the other side there's definitely a bunch of people on the left that'll say what were you doing this is the straw that broke the camel's back like you didn't see this coming a mile away you didn't know this is what Tucker was ban on the other side you didn't know this is what Tucker was basically saying outright or intimating all night long and you know you can list a lot of other Fox News personalities alongside him and there's people on the right that'll be like these people you know are idiots and nobody cares about them anyway and they're barely they're barely on the network and blah blah blah it doesn't even matter or you know we knew who they were when they

when they started their current operation blah blah blah blah so I'm not in the grand scheme of things, does these two people leaving really matter? I mean, I don't know, but it does seem like it does seem like the pushback. I think that it's it's probably a forward facing or an outward facing symbol of, you know, a sort of larger feeling of unrest within the organization. You know, the news stories about it have talked about out there were that Fox ran pieces that were basically contradicted the Carlson documentary, uh, which, you know, the news stories about it. without mentioning him by name. And it seemed like that was, you know,

kind of directly in response at the decision of several hosts to what Carlson was allowed to do. That was amazing to me. If we can just stop on that for a second. Sure. So there's people at Fox who are like, wow, you're really going too far

by trying to rewrite the history of January 6th. So I'm going to do a segment that sub-tweets your documentary pushes back on a particular part of it on Fox News, but I'm not going to mention you or the documentary. Right. I'm going to hope that people watching my show will pick up on the queue that I think you're wrong

and this was an irresponsible thing to do, but I'm not actually going to connect the dots for them. Well, and I think it probably, I mean, it does cut both ways, right? I mean, it's like I'm not going to mention it by name because like the bosses won't let me mention it by name. But also if I mention it by name, if you mention it by name, you might draw the ire of the, the audience in a way that you don't just by sort of like suggesting an alternate history, right? Or that's a good point. Yeah.

So, you know, I'm sure that if you ask them, they'd be like, listen, there's only so much I could just say out loud. This is, you know, there's people above me that are making these decisions. It's above my pay grade, whatever. But those same people would probably also privately tell you, like, if it's, it's a lot easier to do it that way, too. You know, I'm kind of glad that's the situation I was in. But yeah, you're right.

I mean, it is interesting. I mean, I think, but I think that the way that Fox set it up sort of invited it in a certain way because they did put it on Fox Nation. They did sort of deliberately coordinate off from the news network or whatever. And so when you do that, it's almost, it's impossible to kind of like serve both masters there. And I don't, I'm not trying to attribute any like grand logic to Fox's decision making, but you can't, by putting it there, you get a little, you know, winking, distance, you know, you have an explanation that you can give out in a press release that you know, as long as there's no follow-up questions, right? But, but like, no one is not attributing the existence of that documentary to Fox News, right? No one, no one is, no one actually feels like

it's distinct from the Fox News news operation. And you also have to deal with all the, I mean, deal with everybody in house just being like, what the heck are we doing, right? I mean, it's, so, um, you know, it's, I'm not sure that you really, did they really gain anything by having it as a, as a set, you know, on Fox Nation as opposed to on the TV, the regular over the year channel, except for, like I said, the sort of like, like implausible deniability, right? Just like as long, like, we can say in a statement that it is a different thing. Plausible deniability. I love that. But David is coining a phrase. No longer plausible deniability.

It's implausible deniability. If you can say a thing and if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, you, if you, if you, if you, if you only need answer one question, then you're prepared for it, right? I mean, it's, I don't know. No, no, that's just on the app. It's not our deal. That's something over there on the app. We're not endorsing that. But there's all kinds of just speculative, artistic, artistic celebration going on over there. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's just an inspired platform. I do kind of want to come back to your question of why do you walk right now? Because it is an interesting one. David Falkinflicted an NPR piece about this and says Jonah Goldberg says that he had been assured by Fox News's leaders that as Trump left Washington, D.C., following his defeat, the network would tamp down on incendiary commentary and claims. So I understand that from a personal point of view, like, oh, wow, Trump's out of office and this isn't getting any better. We're still the Donald Trump network.

we are still putting out a line of events, whether it's on vaccines, whatever, that it is trying to either appease one person or appease the supporters of one person. I understand that. Just think how much is being conceded there. I was told that after Trump left office, we would tamp down on this stuff.

I mean, so all the stuff that happened when he was in office, you know, the very same kinds of things, I mean, that's just to me, it's like, okay, you know, and I understand, everybody has their breaking point where people's breaking points are very, very different, but that was, that just really, really struggling. It's true. I mean, you know, this isn't the whole part of what you just said, but in the defense of Goldberg, you know, the folks that stuck around for as long as they did, we also thought that

Fox would probably pivot to the center or pivot away from Trump after he was out of office. and it's sort of one of the most amazing things of the past calendar year has been their inability to do that for unwillingness but but I think you know just the fact that it's not been in their they've determined it's in their best interest to keep ideologically on the you know Trump into the spectrum that's been a surprise you know I mean it maybe not a shock a pure shock but that's I mean it did seem like that would be the opportunity to sort of get back to conventional

you know tax cut conservatism um but yeah i mean you're right everybody has the breaking point and you can understand the sort of logic of when you're at least the the logic when you're trying to convince yourself of something or justify something to yourself you can understand well i got to stick around because like i want to be there when the people are listening you know or i got to be the the opposing voice um you know voice crying out in the wilderness even when when nobody's agreeing with me or whatever and then I'll still be there when things turn around and then you realize things aren't turning around. That was kind of the Shep Smith theory. And he stuck around as long as he did. Right. Like remember, I remember he had a quote one time. I don't know if he said this or whatever,

but something attributed to him where it's like, think of who will replace me if I leave. So maybe I disagree with X, Y, and Z, but the person they're going to bring in for me is not going to be like me. you know, they're going to be somebody who is dishing out even more red meat. So, you know, again, maybe that's your thing here. Did you see these Glenn Greenwald tweets? Oh, did I? Yeah. I'll read the first one. Two of the most vocal and unhinged advocates of the first war on terror, Jonah Dispatch and

Stephen Hayes just quit Fox News where nobody knew they worked in protest over Tucker Carlson warning of the dangers of the new war on terror and questioning FBI involvement. dot, dot, dot. So this has become, I guess we can credit this largely to Trump too, the well,

what about the Iraq war comeback to anything? I mean, this has been the case for a long time. And before the Iraq war, it was the first Iraq war. And, you know,

in between there, it was, or I guess post-Iraq war during the Obama administration, it was all the kind of tragedy that arose from the bombings that the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton were kind of signing off on the Middle East. I mean, there's always something that you can point at, the atrocities that you can point at,

totally justifiably and say, why would you ever want to listen to that person? I think it'd be pretty hard to draw the line at those two people on Fox News and, you know, kind of put them at a separate category. I don't think they were by far alone in abetting the Iraq War or, for that matter, just any number of other, you know, human rights catastrophes. But, I mean, the whole thing from Greenwald is just sort of, I don't know, I mean, maybe it's not, maybe it's nothing worth pointing out, but it does feel like the, this tweet thread by him is sort of the most sort of like, it's like the ultimate sort of,

like mission statement from him at this point, right? I mean, of anything, he's taken a lot of flack for being a Fox apologist over the past months or years or whatever, and a lot of it's justifiable. But it's also been sort of, there has been a, I'd say a plausible deniability to it. Maybe it's in the implausible to deniability category. It's, it's kind of hard to justify. I mean, you know, the argument from him and from Matt Taibi and all these people is that, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. media, it's the people, it's the media that it shifts it to the left, and they've stayed sort of where they are, and that there's all this power now accumulated in the liberal establishment,

and that's what we need to be taking on, and there's no power left in the Fox News audience. So, like, that's, so it's, you know, to be, to be singling them out or singling out, Trump as a dictator wannabe is just so unnecessary that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but if there's anything that, like, old school Lynn Greenwald or whoever else should just be, like, pointing at and identifying as a problem, I mean, wouldn't it be just, just, you know, like the just unbridled propaganda that Tucker Carlson is putting on Fox Nation. I mean, even if you're sympathetic to January 6th was just a bunch of people waving flags and got a little bit out of hand, even if you're sympathetic to like Trump was not, was never signaled, you know, a threat to democracy.

If you're, you know, if you're as kind of evenhandedly sympathetic as you could possibly be to that point of view, there should at least be a caveat amongst this thread of tweets that's just like, we can all agree that Tucker Carlson's documentary is completely wrong and shouldn't exist in any sort of news setting, but that's not there, right?

Instead, what's there is just like running down the people who walked away because of it, because they walked away from it, because they walked away, and pointing out everything else that they've done wrong as a means of discrediting them. But also, as I'm just, alluded to early on, saying right off the bat that like these people are never on Fox News so

it barely, so like who the hell are they? You know, I mean, it's, it's a meaningless gesture. It's a, it's a, you know, it's not shocking coming from Greenwald, but it is just, it does seem like the sort of most extreme sort of distillation of where he is now. Listener, Matthew Moore suggests a new bit. Says the breaking point. feels like the kind of trope made for the show. So this was the breaking point for these particular contributors. Anyone who wants to catalog breaking points, please send them our way. Speaking of bits, David, last week we debuted media piss test.

Oh, yeah. Because for the media, it's always Major League Baseball in 1998. Everyone and everything is, quote, on steroids. We got this idea from Arizona TV news anchor Mitch Kau. and Mitch gets to nominate the very first one, which comes from the Australian Financial Review. I'd say I totally understood this article, but a home buying fees charged by the government in Australia,

which I believe are called, which is called Stamp Duty, have gotten out of control, a person in the article called it Bracket Creep on steroids. Okay, so that is our first on steroids. Also, David, this came to us from Mr. Media X, ESPN's Paul Feinbaum, you know Paul Feinbaum. Oh yeah.

Commenting on knowledge bubbles that we all live in these days in a strange time. In a column in the New York Times says this is tribalism on steroids. Yes, yes. And a seasonal one for you, David, from listener Eric Espig, points us to a new recipe for Thanksgiving, which I believe combines pumpkin pie and cheesecake. Quote, think of it as pumpkin pie on steroids. everything is on steroids.

Pumpkin pie on steroids at least is something. Tribalism on steroids could have just been tribalism, you know, by another name, right? I don't know. Isn't we live in an age where every food is on steroids? It's like a bacon cheeseburger on steroids. Yeah, that's the menu at every fast food restaurant.

Like a triple thing or a double thing. Okay. Last one for you, David. This one hits a little close to home. It comes here from Wesley. bulge. I don't know if you know this, but the University of Texas Longhorns are having a truly horrendous college football season. How bad are the Texas Longhorns? Well, they lost to Bailey the other day. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. They're worse than that. At the time when this question

we're about to hear was posed to head coach Steve Sarkeesian, they'd lost five straight games. Since then, they've lost six straight games. But I want you to listen to the question. Steve Sarkisian got at his November 15th press count. Good money to you, Coach Sarkis. Boy. Coach, a couple years ago, one of my good friends and I were faced with a massive problem we couldn't solve. And in his wisdom, he said, you know, at this point, we need to stop and ask ourselves, what would an extraordinary person do in this situation?

And this resonated with me the whole weekend. And I realized that of all the coaches who could be standing at that podium right now in those shoes, you are that extraordinary person. And you have a team. what I call coaching juggernauts. This is not only my opinion, this is a fact. I don't think anyone could dispute this.

So my question, as we write, you know, the Sarkesian era story, we're not even done with the first chapter yet. Can you unfold some of the onion of what are you working on?

How are you solving this problem? I realize that you might not even know, but, you know, I want to steal from Julian Ellumann. It's going to be one-hous story. I mean, there's so much there.

but the bringing in Julian Edelman as the kind of authority figured a quote at the end might have been my favorite part. Oh, that's fantastic stuff. I got a lot of people sending to me and I say, this has got to be a bit. Yeah.

It's got to be a bit. And people are like, I don't think it's a bit. I'm like, you'll just never, the guy had lost five games in a row. And we're talking about how extraordinary he is. For some reason, we're citing Julian Edelman. not Teddy Roosevelt, mind you.

Man in the arena of Julian Edelman. That's too much. It's too much. It's time for David Chumaker, guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline, David,

about a miserable tie between the Steelers and Lions and the NFL was tied in knots. Yeah. In OTS knots. Today's headline comes from Girl School alum. It's from the New York Times.

The story is about a new memoir, speaking of memoirs, from the actor Will Smith. Nice. Okay. I'm not going to give you much more information, but I will tell you two things. The title plays on Will Smith's NBC sitcom of Yore.

Yeah. And it is super, super strained. What was the New York Times' strain pun headline? So it's not just fresh prince, it's not just a fresh prince pun. It's a fresh prince of Bel Air pun. Yes. The whole way.

And it's just about, it's just the existence of the memoir. The Fresh Prince. He's written a book. The fresh, is it P-R-I-N-T-S, Fresh Prince? No, it's Fresh Prince. The headline includes Fresh Prince just like it is. Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I mean, super strained.

Prince of Fair I'm just laughing at this so much What if it's a French phrase? Oh no Now you know there's no way I'm getting this The Fresh Prince of And what if Bell is spelled

Bell B-E-L-L-E-B-E-Fair Bell Bell Bell I might have had to look up the pronunciation of this The Fresh Prince of Bell Letra Oh my The Fresh Prince

Prince of Bell Lettra. That's wow. Wow. Pretty amazing, right? Yeah, that's pretty good. I can see clicking on it there in the Google Doc just to make sure. Yeah. It's good. Fresh Prince of Bell Letcher, Will Smith has a memoir. A lot of padding of backs going on at the New York Times.

Yeah, that's pretty good. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We got Thanksgiving coming up this week, David. But we still have a Friday press box. This is geared around a problem I have at home. I don't know if I've told you about this. And I assume you and I are in the same boat here. Do you want to be funny dad? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Get a nice laugh. Like if the kid goes to school and somebody says, your dad funny. Yeah. They will answer in the affirmative.

Yeah. Well, I want to be funny dad too. But let me tell you something. Some days I get laugh. Some days fewer laughs. It's tough. Yeah. Tough crowd. And then I look over and I see my eight-year-old reading a book from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series where I watch my six-year-old being read a book from the Diary for Wimpy Kid series and they are laughing like it's George Carlin in his prime and just a totally different level of laugh. Yeah. Like an uncontrolled laughter, you know,

rather than the ha-ha-ha dad. Good one. And I'm like, wait a second. Why is that author funny? like super funny. And I'm just kind of medium delight funny. Yeah. I'm like the guy who opens at the comedy store on Tuesday night. You know,

just a, you kind of feel a warm feeling all over. Well, let's get, now let's get to the main, let's get to the headline. I like where this is going. So we invited the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series,

Jeff Kenny. Yeah. On to the program. And he is going to do how to write a children's book with us. Wow. Another of our how-to series. This could be very valuable for you and I. This is going to be your best, this is going to be the highest rated interview that you've

ever done on this show. Among 40-year-old dads, yes, it will be. No, and not just that. There's going to be just a billion people who, like, you know, have always secretly wanted to write a children's book that are going to find this thing. This is great. You're going to end up, this is, yeah, well, get ready for Brian's How to Write a Children's Book Corner, the weekly podcast from Spotify coming up soon.

I walked into Romans the other day up here in Pasadena, and it was like, LeBron had a children's book. And then there's like the Mike Lupica children's books. Everybody wants to write a children's book. There's a big trend piece about this. It must have been in the New York Times or something. But yeah, just like the Jimmy Fallon's the world, just cranking them out. It's kind of amazing.

But it's hard to write a children's book. Oh, yeah. There's an art to it. And I feel there's things you can do and can't do. Anyway, Jeff Kinney answers those questions. And then David and I are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.