The Press Box - The View to a Kill: Maddow, LeBron, and Rosie | The Press Box

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

Donald Trump continues his total-exoneration victory lap and Rachel Maddow refuses to let the Mueller report go (04:30); the sports media world flips on LeBron James (23:30); and a new book reveals the behind-the-scenes chaos at 'The View' (39:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Our very own Bill Simmons just released his 500th Bill Simmons podcast episode, featuring Bill Hater talking about HBO's new season of Barry, S&L stories, and favorite movies. And for the very first time, Bill is joined by a long-awaited special guest. He also just recorded a new rewatchables episode on Fast Five with Shay Serrano. And after you listen to the Rewatchables, head over to the Winging It podcast, where Vince and Kent interview the Fast Five episode.

star himself ludicrous, where they discuss his career, his new music, and Fast 9. You can find these episodes and much more ringer content on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. David, Rich Eisen noted on a show last week that at an NCAA tournament game, he saw the ringers Roger Sherman, and in fact saw more of Roger Sherman than he would like to have seen, if you catch my drift. What I want to know is, what's the most embarrassing. Part of you, someone could see at a sporting event. Wow. That's pretty, that's pretty personal. Well, keep it clean.

Whenever I travel to cover wrestling, I always feel like I, and this is not a particularly unique thing. I always pack poorly. And so, like, by the time I'm going to the event, I'm in, like, the same shirt for the third day in a row, because, like, I just didn't bring what I thought I should have brought. So I think that maybe that's more of a, if people smelled me at an event, they might take offense. I think that the most awkward thing that would happen would probably be me just like horribly underdressed for some situation or overdressed for another. I'm not exactly sure.

I kind of don't want anyone to see me ever, but that's a real personal thing. I probably shouldn't say out loud. So I don't know. Do you have an answer to this question? My mind went to overdress as well. Just incorrectly wearing a suit. Yeah. Trying to sort of look the part of a dapper 1940s reporter.

and in fact your suit collar is just way up, or you've tied your tie in some cockamamie way. Yes. That's it. I think the biggest thing in our kind of, you know, there is no privacy world is that I am sitting at a sporting event and my notebook is visible. Oh, yeah.

And, you know, you sort of cultivate the image that you're some kind of semi-conscientious, hardworking reporter. And somebody watching TV just says, you've written boring in parentheses on your notebook and nothing for the next 30 minutes. That's what I was like, oh, wow, this is sports right. I got to say, there's nothing worse. I mean, this is such a, like, a complaint that no person should ever make out loud.

But when you are blessed with good seats at an event as a member of the media or whatever else, just to the odd pressure of being on camera, potentially on camera all the time is just like, I just don't want, I mean, that's what I was getting at earlier. Just like the idea that someone's going to see me sitting on like the fourth row, just like not paying attention is just the is like the most frightening thing in the world you know like come on it was like four hours long i was just dozing off like give me a break whatever and that like that that's that that's always there but i think that the only thing that's worse than that and i say this as a you know bald man with glasses is when somebody tweets at me or texts me that they see and with a

picture of them citing me at a sporting event and it not being me no that's we are the toilet paper stuck to the Shoe of Media Podcast. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. The Press Box is the media podcast we are not allowed to describe more than one country on this planet as Mexican. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here again with three topics for your pleasure and amusement. First, David, we need to do another segment on the Mueller report because this thing ain't over. And speaking of Ain't Over, what about Rachel Maddow refusing to let Mueller go? We discussed.

Second, the Lakers season has gone down in flames. and the media has flipped slowly on LeBron James. What happened? And finally, we'll talk about a new book that reveals a behind the scenes insanity at the view, a study of a show where the backstage is a lot more interesting than the stage itself. Plus the notebook dump and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But let's start with Mueller, David.

Mueller 2, Mueller Electric Bugaloo. What tired internet joke can we give to this? Just some backstory. Last week, Donald Trump continued his total exoneration victory lap. Here he is in Michigan on Thursday night. And after three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over. The special counsel completed its report and found no collusion and no obstruction.

I could have told you that two and a half years ago very easily. Total exoneration, complete vindication. You know, it's interesting. Robert Mueller was a god to the Democrats, was a god to them until he said there was no collusion. They don't like him so much right now. We need a category for when Donald Trump over-pronounces words. The collusion delusion. Total exoneration.

He found like nine extra syllables in those words. Trump was also on with Sean Hannity last week. And in that Michigan speech, Brian Stelter of CNN notes, he saluted, quote, our friends, meaning his Fox News friends, Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham, and said their ratings were through the roof last night. other updates.

So it was basically a total victory lap on the Trump end. Back in the media, the New York Times homepage noted that the Mueller report exceeded 300 pages, raising questions once again, David, as we talked about last week, why we're all relying on a four-page summary. Times was reported on that on Thursday morning. And they also found that, or maybe CNN found this,

that only 74 words of the Mueller report were actually quoted by Attorney General William Barr. So have we made any progress from last week? Or are we just in this weird stasis, which is really, really strange to me for a major news story? Yeah, I think that's it. And I think that some of the collective side that came from the liberal side of the political landscape when the Mueller report was filed, I think relied on the assumption that if there was, you know,

more to the story than met the eye, then it would somehow have sort of leaked out immediately. Or, you know, upon Bill Barr putting out that memo, I mean, you know, I mean, the, you know, Mueller himself has been notably, you know, tight-lipped and closed off during the whole process. But he did come out and dispute that one BuzzFeed story. which would lead one to believe that if Barr had been totally off base,

maybe there would have been some word from Mueller or, you know, leaked from his cohort. But yeah, I think that where we were last week was a sort of caution belief that what Barr said was true under the assumption that we would get the, you know, more supplementary information as the days went on. That hasn't happened and now we're still waiting. Yeah, in short order too, right? that it was going to be like days, not weeks. Sure. Before we figured all this stuff out. Yeah.

The other interesting part of this is that public opinion polling about this issue. So NBC News, Wall Street Journal found that Trump's approval rating had actually gone down following the release of the Mueller report, his approval down from 43, down from 4652, 29 percent. this is according to Josh Jordan on Twitter, say the Mueller report clears Donald Trump, while 40% says it doesn't. So total exoneration, not only from the president, but I think a lot of the media too,

and yet the public doesn't seem to be buying this at all. And they seem either unchanged or pretty clearly against the conclusions of the report, which is also pretty fast. fascinating to me. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, I think it goes to show that, you know, a lot of, a lot of people's

opinions have, you know, were formed before the report came out and they aren't going to be necessarily affected by, by it being submitted and probably not by, you know, the, like, its actual details being released whenever that happens. But yeah, I mean, I, I just find it, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I just think that it'll be, I think that what we see was, you know, if you want to take the really partisan angle on what Bill Barr and what the Trump administration is doing, is that they're trying to, you know, run out the clock and affect public opinion. If, and the hope must be that like, that public opinion will sway in favor of believing that,

you know, what what Trump was saying in that clip was 100% true. And that when, and that if any truth comes out that contradicts it, well, you know, public opinion will have already been sort of set. The other thing that interested me about this is this whole question of how the media should conduct itself now in this moment of waiting. You know, one of the errors that some conservative critics made when the Mueller report came out was a, it has invalidated all your reporting to which the answer was, show me all the New York Times and Washington Post stories that were actually wrong, which they weren't in the main. The other is Rachel Maddow in a particular case. I noticed this, did you read this column by Willa Paskin over at Slate? Yeah, it was really good. Takes Maddow to task for continuing to cling to not only Mueller, but this idea that, you know, greater truths will be unearthed.

Her concluding sentence, and I encourage you to read the whole column, is if Maddow's audience of susceptible ostriches and amateur detectives, people who bury themselves in conspiratorial detail, hoping to unearth the one clue that will beam us out of this reality is not as malignant as Fox's audience of the hateful aggrieved and ignorant. In this one regard at least, what's happening between MSNBC and Fox is not a contest. More than one cable news host can disservice their audience at a time. What did you make of her critique of Maddow? Yeah. I mean, this is honestly not a personal anecdote, but the thing I hear over and over again from, you know, co-workers and friends is that those susceptible ostriches and amateur detectives are, you know, largely made up from, you know, liberal suburban moms of people I know who are watching at home every night.

And dads will just be equal opportunity here. Sure, sure. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, I think that that, that, that Paskin's critique was, you know, was very legitimate. I mean, it was very well formed and well considered. I mean, the question, to me, is even separate from fact. And I think that she makes the case cogently that Maddow is not necessarily concerned with ultimate fact. But setting that aside, you know, the question is like, has Maddow become the liberal Glenn Beck?

And, you know, and not just the caricature. I mean, Ben Beck was a Fox News personality who, you know, followed a line of conspiratorial thinking that led him further and further down a rabbit hole until he was eventually unemployable by even by Fox News. And then, of course, he's, he's, you know, reformed several times since then in different directions. But, but listen, I mean, the charges that have been, I mean, that President Trump and those around him have been accused of, even the, you know, the, you know, the, the, the, the. the folks that have actually been charged with crimes. I mean, that is an actual conspiracy. So, I mean, so just, I mean, it's not a, it's not, you know, conspiracy is not necessarily a dismissive term, but, you know, the facts of the case

don't need to be dismissed or demonized to acknowledge that what Maddow is doing is a conspiratorial thought process, a thought experiment, right? And that, and when the, when the thrill is in the chase, conspiracy, you know, a conspiracy theory is never really settled, right? I mean, it's like you're always looking for the next thread to pull, the next thing. And that's what gets dangerous for the viewers. And I don't mean necessarily literally dangerous, but it's not, if it's a pursuit of conspiracy instead of a pursuit of truth, then you're not left with much.

I guess I go two ways on Madda, which is there's that. So when you're in the, you know, here comes collusion, when you're on that bandwagon, I think it's really hard to pull up and just tell your audience, you know what? This was an absolutely worthwhile story. I feel great about everything we talked about. I feel this is so important and so potentially hideous that I don't regret a minute we spent on this. But there's nothing here, folks. There's nothing to see here.

I just feel that that's basically impossible for somebody like her to do. There's just, like, even if it's. even if we read the entire Mueller report and it comes to that conclusion. I just feel like no talk show host is going to do that because their reputation is based on them kind of knowing stuff you don't and putting the pieces together in ways you can't. Well, that's the, I mean, that's the timeless allure of conspiracy, right? It's that like... Or talk shows. I mean, I think either one, right? Yeah, but I mean, and that's, I think you're drawing the right point.

I mean, the appeal of conspiracy is that there's a kind of sort of concise set of secret knowledge that if you understand this, you know more than someone who's been a lifetime studying the subject or who works on the inside or who claims to know everything. I mean, the allure is the sort of is the sort of simplicity but unattainability of it. Now, if you, and you're right, that's exactly what happens on the talk show. Now, listen, if you want to give the benefit of the doubt to Matto and anyone else, I mean, the rest of, much the rest of MSNBC has found themselves in the same. position. It's that they don't know what the report actually says and you don't want to be doing two about faces in a row, right? You don't want to, you don't want to come out with the mea culpa only to have that be what's used against you. I mean, if the, I mean, heaven forbid, if the bar, if the, if the, if the Mueller report comes out and there's just indisputable proof that there was some

grand conspiracy, then the, the, then your maya culpo that ran that, that you ran two weeks early is going to be used in every ad, you know, to get Trump reelected. So, I mean, you, you have to be cautious, but it's, but, but it's a lack of caution that's gotten to this point, um, that, that's, that is, that has, that has put them in the situation. I just, the other, the other way, the reason I'm torn here is because I just wonder and blame this on all my political leanings if you want, if the proper way to cover Trump, at least from these kind of jobs, like the one that Maddow has, is from the angle of probable conspiracy or potential conspiracy. As you point out, there's enough here.

without the Mueller report, you know, quashing it to say, oh, man, a lot of really, really just crazy, awful, criminal things have happened. You know, Trump trying to build, you know, buildings in Moscow during the election, right? Trump has lied and lied and lied about all of this stuff. So, you know, I just, I remember this at the beginning of the Trump administration. I feel that this has been a continuing theme, at least. for the quote unquote mainstream media, which is what pose are they supposed to take? You know, all the evidence is in front of them that they're dealing with something. They're dealing with someone who lies more than any president they've covered, who is involved

in extracurricular activities outside of the White House and its business empire that's unlike any president they've ever covered. So I guess the other thing is just why not stay in that mode until otherwise notified until your absolute last moment. Because, you know, again, I just, I can't help but think. I am not for, you know, a couple of things Paskin points out in here, her kind of winking at the audience about things like, oh, there's this unidentified corporation, folks,

this thing is still live, that may be doing a disservice to your audience. But as for your overall outlook about Trump, I just wonder if that's not the right place to be. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And you made the point last week, I believe, that, you know, if, that the timing has, of all of the charges that, you know, the Mueller investigation has, has, has sort of done a disservice to the, to the end point of it, which is that, you know,

the crimes of Paul Manafort have sort of been swept under the rug, or at least lost of memory, you know, lost to history to a certain extent, that, you know, that if, if there were any one thing that's come out, and like you said, there's all these Washington Post, New York Times stories that have not been disproven by any stretch, if all of these things came out on one day, it would seem like a tidal wave. You know, it'd seem crazy. And many people have pointed out, you know,

the emolument stuff. I mean, if any president in the past had a hotel across the street from the White House making the kind of money that Trump is, that would be, that would be conspiracy, I mean, yeah, conspiracy enough to, to, to water down an entire administration. Absolutely.

If not, if not put somebody in legal jeopardy. But, again, bring it back around to the subject, you're right. I mean, there is Mattow and others have put themselves in an uncomfortable situation. You know, it's it's not just that they've done

that she's done a disservice to reviewers up to this point, but it's that she finds herself in a position to, an inexorable position that she can't sort of artfully back out. And I mean, she shouldn't have to artfully back out, but she, but, you know, there's no way to kind of end the conspiracy

until it's entirely put to rest. And then these people are tuning in every night to hear the next chapter in this never-ending conspiracy narrative, right? I mean, it's, we joke about, you know, it seems like every other week we find some way to joke about that, you know, the real treasure

was the friends we made along the way, but it really is like the, it's the viewers we gained along the way, right? I mean, her numbers are skyrocketing. Totally. And, and, and, and, whether or not there's, you know, some definitive proof of collusion or whatever, that kind of became secondary to the hunt for this conspiracy, which is, you know, that's not exactly news gathering in a traditional sense. But, you know, that's that's, that's where we are.

We always talk about the myth of the swing voter. Is there really a swing viewer who's like, you know, Trump won this round. So instead of mad out tonight, I'm going to watch Hannity. Who is that person? Does that person? Does that person? exist on planet earth? I'm sure that person exists. I mean, well, I guess if that person existed, we probably would have seen a New York Times magazine profile of that person. Do they live in the Midwest, perhaps? Do they go to diners? I think we all know it's just like the level, like the volume of, you know,

of political angst on your side leads you to watch these shows. It's not, yeah, it's not either or. Yeah, it's like back in the, it's. When Texas wins a big game, I go to my University of Texas message board. So we can all have a little party. I remember back in the day. I mean, they used to always talk about, you know, Rush Limbaugh's numbers would be touted as this great, like, accomplishment and in the conservative movement. And, you know, there's no liberal equivalent of it. And, you know, I think we used to joke together. It's like, no, because the liberals are listening to Howard Stern. They're not seeking out, you know, some sort of political radio. And now that's some of that has changed. And, you know, the modern era, they're listening to political podcasts and such. But, you know, I think that's all a direct line from the level of sort of, like I said, the level of, angst that surrounded your political movement.

All right, David, now it's time for the overwork Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. The Boston Globe reports, David, that the Icelandic budget airline, Wow, W-O-W, says it has ceased operations stranding passengers on two continents. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, nothing to say but wow, or just, Wow. Thanks to college sports writer Dan Wolkin for that one. We're now in the zone where celebrity journalists are sending us stuff, which I really like. That's just happy. Because I don't want to go find this stuff. So please send them to me. Totally. This one requires a smidge of backstory. David, do you remember the Wells Fargo scandal of a couple of years ago? Yes. Per Wikipedia highlights include the bank ordering credit cards for customers without their consent and also creating fraudulent checking and savings accounts. There were more than 2 million unauthorized accounts created in a five-year period.

Okay. Okay. When it was reported last week that Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan was stepping down, it was an overwork Twitter joke to write as a retirement gift. Wells Fargo plans to give him 35 credit cards, 14 savings accounts, and 72 checking accounts. Thanks to Tyler Tourville for that one. We need more material from finance Twitter. We really do.

So please also send that stuff in. All right, David, before we get to LeBron. John James in the media. Let's take a quick break. Hulu's paying some of the league's best players, a lot of money to do some pretty crazy stuff. Joel changed his nickname from the process to Joel. Hulu has live sports and Bede.

Damian Lillard got a tattoo that says Hulu has live sports. Clearly, they really want you to know that Hulu has live sports. Get over 60 live and on-demand channels, tons of shows and movies, and exclusive originals with Hulu. Get rid of your cable and make the switch. $45 a month. Watch your favorite teams and the biggest games all season with no cable required.

Watch on the go and on all your favorite devices. Live TV plan required. Restrictions apply. Learn more at Hulu.com. All right, David. Topic number two, LeBron James. Last week,

the Lakers and LeBron finally decided to shut it down for the season. And the writers who were waiting to hit publish on their what went wrong takes stood up. There was a big one on ESPN from Dave McMenner. a lacerating column this weekend in the LA Times from Bill Plashky. Yeah. And many other things. Couple notes about LeBron and the media. Number one is last summer, and I remember because I had to write about this,

LeBron had something like 100% approval rating in the NBA Twitter and beyond NBA Twitter. He had dragged that God Awful Cavs team to the NBA finals. he had opened the school in Akron. And it just seemed like he was in this zone of you can't do anything wrong. And whatever, you know, anger people had had just being mad at him, being mad at the decision, everything. It was just all kind of gone for a while. It is now back, if not in as concentrated a form as in a much smaller form. what do you make of our mood swings about LeBron James?

That's a good question. Well, I mean, yeah, I think that just to look, I mean, listen, there was much conspiracy theorizing throughout last season about LeBron going to L.A. A lot of people projected it a mile away. And there was, you know, people were certainly keeping tabs on him as his last season with the Cavs wound down. but if you need any more indication of how high his approval rating was, I mean, the idea of a star of his magnitude leaving his hometown team for the L.A. Lakers

and getting relatively little blowback for it. That's sort of all you need to know, right? I think that, you know, LeBron is, is for better or worse. He's sort of just like he's, you know, the bellwether of what our boss Bill Simmons calls the player empowerment era of sports. I mean, he's,

he has, without a doubt an outsized influence on the NBA, not just from his own level of celebrity, his endorsement deals, everything else, but his relationship hazies as it may be

to clutch sports, the management group, and also when he shut it down for the season, a lot of players have been shut down for the season at this point. You know, teams are angling for draft spots and stuff, but there did seem to be a sort of finality to it where I don't think he's necessarily leaving the team,

although there have been those theories too, but there's, but there was definitely, but it did feel like sort of a, I don't know, it felt like, it felt like when you hear about your friend taking a break in their relationship.

You know, it felt like there was some sort of, it hurt a little bit to hear about. And part of that's that, you know, LeBron has been, you know, for the most part,

a real warrior in terms of playing every game he's healthy for throughout his career. You know, that just the sort of mold that he is, either crafted for himself or that we've sort of foisted upon him is that of the sort of iconic athlete that would never do any never stop fighting for that one last win um but i think that that like with the relationship it just takes one thing like that to sort of like make you pick sides you know or make you kind of make you raise an eyebrow and you start to look at all this other

stuff you know you start to look at the the sort of gm lebron aspect of everything and the the behind this behind the curtain LeBron. And that's, that's way less flattering than the, you know, LeBron we were celebrating 10 months ago. I think that's exactly right. And I think that's the,

the sort of downside for the players, not for humanity, but for the players of the player empowerment movement that LeBron, you correctly say, started is that you get blamed for being a player and you also get blamed for being the shadow GM. You know,

you're going to get, so LeBron had, a good season on the court this year, even though it was hurt. But he gets blamed for the way, for the fact that Quy Leonard didn't want to be a Laker. And that the, the crappy veterans that the Lakers signed to be around him. You know, that all sort of, that all kind of goes in. And, you know, it's like, to me, it's sort of like to the extent that we can separate out what James did and what Magic Johnson and Rob Polinka did in terms of signing people, you should get that blame, right? If you were constructing the team, then you're going to get a little bit of that.

So that's okay. The other thing that really interests me about this, and I said a few things about this on heat check today. So forgive me from repeating myself if you're a ringer podcast completest. But there's this whole idea with LeBron that, and I think this is a little bit of a straw man. I'm not sure anybody's actually saying this. But let's say this idea is out there, that he has has so many entertainment projects that he's being distracted by them. That he is here in Hollywood now. He's got all those things.

There was a deep dive about that in the LA Times this week. He's got all that stuff. I don't necessarily think he is distracted. I certainly think he should be able to do whatever he wants in that realm of life. Here's the thing. From a local perspective here in L.A., I never heard him make the case in the media terribly strongly of why he wanted to be a Laker. I heard why he wanted to be out here because of all the entertainment stuff.

But to play for the Los Angeles Lakers. Lakers, I never got the sense of that. And, you know, writers here still talk about the fact that when he decided to sign with the Lakers at the beginning of free agency, he didn't do a press conference here. They sent out Rob Polinkin to read from the Paulo Coelho novel. What? Yeah. I mean, that's like, which is like, honestly, the worst moment in the history of press conferences. I mean, what in the hell was that? And I just never got the sense that he, did he really wanted to be a part of that team. And again, that's not saying LeBroad didn't try.

That's not saying LeBron's attracted. Put all that aside. Put all those dumb ideas aside. It's just like, I don't quite understand the affirmative case of why he wants to be a like. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a, I think that it's easy to read. And listen, I'm, I'm jumping over to the fans perspective now. But it's easy to read a lot of just sort of wrongheadedness into all of the, I mean,

just all of the decision-making processes that go on in his camp. and, you know, by extension, clutch sports too. You know, I, I joked when Anthony Davis made his trade demand that, like, you could just see the clutch crew. I mean, you could imagine the clutch crew, like, coming up with this idea, like, we'll just demand a trade on this Monday, this specific day, and then it'll force their hand. They'll have to take the Lakers trade, and they all agree.

They all high five. They all walk out of the meeting. And, like, 45 minutes later, they're just, like, staring at the computer screen confused as to what just happened, you know? And I feel like there was sort of some of that with his announcement with the Lakers, too, that like he was going to take a vacation and then they were like, you know it would be really cool

if instead of waiting until you got back and string everybody along, which nobody wants, we just went ahead and told him we're signing with the Lakers right now, but then they forgot to cancel the vacation. You know, they forgot to do like the second half of it

that would have really driven the point home. And you're right, he hasn't made the case. The one thing he did say was that he wasn't upset. He was signing regardless whether or not Paul George decided to sign because he was there for the long haul.

That was a statement. That's right. That statement specifically. And then what we got this season, And again, you're reading, you know, you read sort of, you know, malevolence into his places where it doesn't exist. But what we saw this season was sort of the opposite of that. Now, maybe he's into the long haul in the sense that, like, he's preserving himself for the long haul. He's preserving his body for the long haul.

But you certainly didn't see him, you know, helping the young Lakers along and trying to, like, and trying to make this version of the Lakers the best it could possibly be. You didn't see them preparing the team that they had this year for future years of greatness. You saw him take an extremely long period of time off for a groin pull, which I'm sure was legitimate, but was, you know, predicted to be a matter of days and ended up being weeks and months. He did not look engaged with his young teammates. He did not make his young teammates feel like he wanted to play with them. I think these are all fair criticisms. Yeah, and there was that, you know, rumors that he was trying to, I mean, very, very legitimate rumors that he was trying to get his coach fired.

Which is just like, again, you're going back to like the LeBron James GM playbook, which has not seemed to work in the past. and, you know, or not consistently in the past. He's won championship, so, you know, that sort of legitimizes everything in its way. But, yeah, I mean, it just, it all just seems like we've been here before. And if LeBron isn't going to have the Herculian ability to overcome, you know, everything that's put in front of him, the kind of, like, holes that he digs for himself and those people around him dig, then I think more than anything, what we see is the Lakers fans

and Los Angeles media wrestling with this question whether or not this project is a bust before it really even begins. Yeah, I mean, I think when people were mad at him after the decision, it was, and again, this looks so cuckoo in retrospect, you don't have the right to go to Miami

or you don't have the right to go to Miami in the way that you did. You don't have the right to change teams. Nobody now seems to be all that mad that he went to the Lakers. It's kind of more like, oh, wow, the Lakers were a disaster this season, and you seem to have a hand in them being a disaster. Like, you didn't, it's like maybe you have the, you had the right to make that choice,

but maybe you just made the wrong choice. Or you made the choice and then did a bunch of bad things about it. I am fascinated, David, by the difference between the way national NBA writers write about LeBron and local people here in Los Angeles write about LeBron, which is fascinating because LeBron is still, even after this season or well into this season, there is still this NBA Twitter thing of LeBron's awesome, oh well, you know, just kind of like, again, it's not, it's not that anybody's pulling a punch. People just talk about NBA players in different ways.

Then you read the L.A. Times and read Plashke's column, and he's like, he's just doing what a local columnist is supposed to do. He's like, I didn't get the memo from NBA Twitter that I'm supposed to be like, love LeBron, LeBron is awesome. Like, this sucks. this is horrible basketball. This is incredibly disillusioning. And this is, you know, we are now in Dodger season already because this was such a

freaking train wreck. And it was, to me, it was so refreshing because I was like, yeah, there's the column I want. But you just realize these people are writing for totally different audiences. You know, you're writing for Angelinos and people who are like, I'm a Laker fan. I was a Kobe fan. I was a Magic fan. And this sucks versus a national audience that maybe is more interested in. LeBron in a different way that's maybe more interested in, oh, who are the Lakers going to sign this season?

All that stuff. Fascinating them. Yeah. You also see in the local media a lot. And Plashke was circumspect about this. That, you know, you operate in extremes, right? I mean, when LeBron signs, you say, this is the beginning of the new golden age of the Los Angeles Lakers. And when you start with that sort of hyperbole, it doesn't take much to sort of knock yourself

back down or to diminish all of your hopes and to go to the other extreme. Now listen, there's nothing in Plashke's most recent piece that, and he kind of wrote the same piece like he's been like he's been writing it. It seems like once a month, you know, and to various varying degrees of And by the way, not to interrupt you, but that's what local calm. We now forget this, but that's what local columnists do, right? Yeah. We've forgotten this in the age where everybody's a national writer. When you're local calmist, you're just like, I'm just going to write this again because it still sucks. Anyway, continue, please. No, I mean, I just, a bit, but there's nothing that he says that's wrong. I mean, I think that more than anything else

is just the sort of the volume or the level of vitriol. Someone would say that, you know, and, and, and, but I think what he does, you know, um, again, that a local columnist can do that, that it's, you know, a little bit harder for a national columnist is just to sort of lay everything out in sequence, you know, to sort of, to say I'm going to kind of retread a lot of the stuff I've done before, but I'm going to do it, you know, I'm just sort of like, I'm just annotating my own, uh, my, you know, my own columns from the season. And, and, and, and, and, and, pulling everything together and that can be and it is more damning

than a you know more zoom I mean more a broader take like Dave McMinman's piece which which is an incredible look into the season if I can jump over there but which I can't my I mean this is not

some brilliant critique of it but it's almost amazing that he got all this inside information really provided a window into this past Laker season and ended it with a literally unwriteable passage of LeBron making a raspberry with his tongue trying to spell it out. And that was, I get the idea, but it was, LeBron was so down on how the season went that he just went, I mean, it was the, it was the, it was like the,

that was the heath. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was, it was, it was, it was, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, so rolled over and, and, and thought I found true love. I hope, I, you know, I'm guessing that Lakers fans, um, you know,

hope that the experiment continues, right? I mean, despite the, despite the, you know, the vague rumors that LeBron may just leave town again or something like that or, or get,

get traded, um, since I guess he is under contract. But it's, but it's, that it's just, that that is the, I don't know,

it just seems so perfect that, that the end result of all of this year, the, of everything that happened this year, everything that happened this year is a series of capitalized consonants that doesn't really read. You know, I mean, it's just maddening sort of. It's a he-ha sketch.

And I'm, by the way, just because I didn't laugh, I appreciate that reference because I love that he-ha sketch. Always good. Inlessly renewable joke there. Two people listening to this podcast know what the hell we're talking about. Tweet at us at the press box spot if you do. should we say one thing before we go about Jeannie Bust denouncing the Anthony Davis rumors is fake news

if you want to insult your own press corps not to mention NBA reporters at large use Trumpian terms like fake news good work that was weird very bizarre very bizarre and by the way she was upset that the rumors had gotten out that they were offering basically everybody on the roster who wasn't LeBron for Anthony Davis

which nobody was actually mad that they were doing that. You know, I mean, at that point, the value of the players and sort of diminished the point where, like, everybody was like, yeah, trade it. I mean, everybody in national media was saying, trade them all, you know, just do whatever it takes to get Anthony Davis on your team. Yeah. Now, I know that she was sticking up for her team. You know, she was trying to do damage control and,

and repair the, start to, you know, to repair the relationships with these players who had to toil under the, you know, the fear of their, but that they're all liable to be trade at any moment. But, you know, if she, I mean, the news that she really should have been trying to battle back against was that her front office was so incompetent that they couldn't get a trade offer across to the Pelicans. You know, I mean, like there were so many other parts of the story that were so much wilder, you know, and I don't know. I mean, that just seemed like such a minor point and such an unnecessarily inflammatory way to get it across.

All right, David. topic number three, perhaps unexpected for this here, press box podcast, but I want to talk about the view. Yeah. Because there is this genre of TV show, and in it I would include network nightly news, pretty much all of cable news, and for a while, the network late night show, where the behind the scenes game of throne style bloodletting is much more interesting than the actual show that airs on television. we're much more interested in the behind-the-scenes article than we are any episode of the program, which brings me to the view, which I mostly consume through clips of Megan McCain going off the rails these days. But I lapped up this article by Yashar Lee,

who is previewing a new book about the view by Ramin Situ-day, a reporter at Variety, former colleague of mine at The Daily Beast, full disclosure. Can we just enjoy a few highlights? from this book about what went on at the view. First of all, the book is called Ladies Who Punch, instead of Ladies Who Lunch. Can we add that to our strain pun collection? Please do.

Yes. Okay, good. Next. Rosie O'Donnell, co-host of the View, Ali writes through two runs from 2006 to 2007 and the second time from 2014 to 2015. Rosie O'Donnell was only the host of the view for that short of period. Did that feel like, remember when we were three years into their

three months into the Trump administration and it felt like 10 years. That's what Rosie on the View, I feel like I've just been reading about Rosie on the View for forever. Yeah. A couple highlights here. Rosie O'Donnell became enraged in a meeting which led Vue co-host Nicole Wallace to report her to HR. O'Donnell added a telling detail that speaks to the lack of oversight of the show. I didn't know what HR was, she says.

Rosie O'Donnell also described Nicole Wallace bringing her husband to work that day to serve as a bodyguard of sorts. So Wallace and Rosie get into it. She reports to the view. She does not know what HR is, and then the bodyguard comes. The Vue's director, Mark Gentile, and two other employees filed a joint complaint to HR

about Rosie O'Donnell's abusive behavior. So really, the HR department over the view getting an incredible workout. Let's see. Oh, this was, I think, my favorite thing in here. So O'Donnell wrote some negative stuff about Barbara Walters in her memoir. This is Rosie O'Donnell's memoir, which is called Celebrity Detox.

As a courtesy, she sent a copy of Celebrity Detox to Walters. Okay? Walters reads it. She's pissed. ABC Management then arranges to have Rosie's memoir, which has not been published yet, leaked to the New York Post.

Right? But in order for the post to get it, the post had to frame O'Donnell as the villain of the piece and have psychologist analyze her mental health. Okay? So they're like, according to,

allegedly, they are like, we'll give you this book, which is a great juicy New York Post story, but you have to have your psychologist analyze Rosie as you read the book. And indeed, the post story was called

in the mind of Rosie O'Drama. Which is right up there with Beta O'Dork in the, uh, strained pun collection. I really don't have a question here. I just thought this article was incredible because it's kind of like one of those things like, oh, wow. There was so much insanity here.

What do you make of any of this, any part of this? I mean, listen, there was a lot of insanity. Frankly, I think I came into it with such high expectations that I was a little bit let down by the lack of absolute insanity. Oh, you felt that there wasn't enough. Well, I mean, I just expected it to be even wilder for some reason with all of the, with all the personalities involved. I do think it's really interesting. I mean, that are, you know, if you, if you do a Google search, the view right now,

you will get 40 iterations on this story. And I don't know if it's, if they're, if they're portioning out little bits of news to every outlet, that, you know, every, every news outlet gets a little bit of a leak from the book, or if they're all just like slicing up, you know, one piece and making blog posts about it, but there's so much, there's so many of these stories out here now. And it's, I mean, it's just really amazing. You're absolutely right. I mean, the behind the scenes is much more interesting

than what happens on TV. That said, that's sort of always been the case for the view, right? I mean, that it gets news when there's some sort of breakdown or, you know, when a major figure goes on. And I think that's the other sort of underrated part of the view is that it's one of the most weirdly significant parts of our national media establishment. Absolutely. As far as presidential candidates, as what we see right,

now popping up on there. I mean, it's sort of the role that, you know, talk shows used to have or, you know, I mean, that nighttime talk used to have, and they still do that to some extent, but, you know, you really do get a chance to be humanized in a way. Yeah, I guess in a way is all the qualification I need. And, you know, you're put in a position of, as, you know, every election seems to come down to some new designation of, you know, you're put in a position of, of, you know, working mothers or or stay at home, stay at home dads or whatever it is. I mean, it's an

audience that a show like the view or the view in particular, you know, can really target. By the way, I'd like to read what the new pecking order is for most desired bookings. And of course, it depends on the person. I think like today, the today's show

would still be above the view. If you could get, if you could slide your actor, actress, author into like the seven or eight o'clock hour, right? But the view's pretty close. And then like the next step down would be Joe Rogan's podcast. I was about to say, I was about to say Joe Rogan's podcast.

I mean, that was, I mean, there's, there's a lot of, you know, it doesn't, there's no, like, real giant national platform anymore to the extent that there was in the past. You know, we don't have 80 million people tuning into the Tonight Show or whatever. And so it's, you know, a fairly large but very targeted audience is, you know, the most important thing in the world. All right, David, let's do the notebook dump. Enjoyed this tweet from Matt Iglesias about a term media Twitter uses, and I think David, you actually used on last week's pod. Quote, quoting Iglesias, I see more and more political pundits using the term fanfic as a kind of shorthand for wishful thinking. But that's not really what fanfic is.

now as someone who's experienced with fanfic David what does what does fanfic really mean I mean fan fiction is taking is taking your favorite you know the characters from your favorite you know fictional properties say like Game of Thrones and writing your own stories with them right so you would say like you would you would put you know John Snow and Aria swashbuckling through Esos

or whatever and then that and make your own story that's unmoored from from you know the actual narrative fabric of the show So that's different than Trump being frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs, which is what I think he's saying. When we refer to like Muellergate fanfic, it is Trump being arrested. So what is that? What's the right term for like, is it just wishful thinking? Is it fantasy booking?

What am I? Yeah, fantasy booking, I think, is right. We try to, you know, there were times at Grantland where Rafe Bartholomew and I tried to expand the sort of footprint of fantasy booking. And it's really hard to make professional wrestling thought processes like applied. of the rest of the world, but I do, that might be more relevant than fanfic, although I feel like fanfic sort of gets the point across, which by the way, we should stipulate now that we shouldn't confuse fanfic and slash fic, which is, oh yeah, that's different. Fanfic, but all about like the sexual lives of these characters.

Duly note. Also a going concern in the pro wrestling fandom world, so, yeah. Update on Trump books. Axios's Mike Allen notes that ABC News correspondent Jonathan Carl is writing a book called front row at the Trump show front row at the Trump show are we now at the edge where everything has been written about

Trump and we should have no more books I would say yes but every time we get a book we get a good segment out of it you know so there's always something there's always something fun in there there was a good piece by Jason Zangarly in the Times magazine about this new

these two guys in DC the javelin who are sort of packaging memoirs of people cast out of the Trump administration. And like they've sort of crack the code in this very sort of amazing way. Also speaking of oversaturation and also speaking of ex-Trump, there are two Steve Bannon documentaries coming out. This is like when there were two talking pig movies back when we were kids. One is directed by Alison Lehman and it's called The Brink.

And the other directed by Errol Morris is going to be called American Dharma. Yeah. I tried to come up with Darwin, Great. puns and I just forgot. But just insert that here. Pretend I did. That's actually an established film phenomenon. It's known as twin films.

It dates back to the beginning of filmdom. But yeah, we remember like a bug's life and ants coming out. Pre-Fontaine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Turner and Hooch and K-9, I think, was the first time I was, I questioned these things. That was a great one. Great moment.

It was Independence Day and Armageddon. The Volcano movies? That was another one? Yes. Oh, yeah. Those are two. Yeah. Interesting Joe Biden's story this week.

Maybe we should devote a whole segment to it next week. But I like this tweet from the New York Times as Amanda Hess, who said a new form of defense has arisen in the Me Too era in which it's very important for a woman to speak their truth and for men to listen, even if the woman is wrong, which sadly in this case she is, but nevertheless, it's quite moving of her to speak out about the wrong thing. That is amazing. And that is exactly what the Biden statement was. And so many people, especially on the lefty side of the political spectrum, that is how they, that is how they tried to navigate these waters. I can't dispute the allegation exactly, but I'm going to kind of jump through all these hoops to try to do it. I thought that was really, really smart. And I hope she was writing a whole column about that.

Yeah. Are we ready for David Shoemaker? Guess is the pun headline. Yes. Sure. Let's go. I kind of have a whole thread for you this week. We can just read some of these out. Brian Raftery, who has written this whole book called Best Movie Year Ever, about the best movies in 1999.

We published an excerpt of it on the record of our problem last week. We've been in our own best movies of 1999, has gone through old issues of Entertainment Weekly, specifically from 1999 to find all their pun movie headlines. Entertainment Weekly, underrated source of pun headlines. kind of sorry I didn't sack these myself but can I give you some of these? Yes, please. Remember the Kirsten Dunst

movie about Richard Nixon called Dick? Oh, yeah. Remember that one? The Entertainment Weekly Movie Review headline it was called Prez Dispensers. Presdispensers.

Oh, man. Yeah, the Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy, also from 1999, light as a father. Light as a father Wild Wild West The bomb starring Kevin Klein and Will Smith

Love that movie, yeah Men in Black Also Barry Soninfeld reference buried in there Hillary and Jackie I don't know if I remember this Looks like it stars Emily Watson Hillary and Jackie

called cello I love you It's a musical thing Oh wow Okay this is a boy this is strained the 13th warrior the Michael Crichton

adaptation oh yeah okay and it involved I guess it involves swords because the headline was clangs all here not the gangs all here but clangs all here wow and Brian has written

what he also would have accepted as pun headlines and they're even better which is clang clang clang went the folly that was his and a bandaris apart, which is both fantastic. A couple others for you. The mummy,

the first mummy, I believe, I think, with Brendan Fraser, matter, matter of corpse. Not matter of course, matter of corpse.

That's great. Brian's far superior headline is the buds and the crips. This is really funny. Anyway. Oh, man. Fantastic stuff. I could keep going. Yeah, we definitely, I think the real lesson here is that, you know, Entertainment Weekly is obviously a weekly magazine.

They did, you know, a handful of these reviews every week. The more disposable a headline pun is sort of the more awesome it is because you just go guns ablazing in with just whatever pun pops into your head and that will make me laugh harder every time than a well-crafted pun. Yeah, and I just remember reading EW in college and thinking, man, these guys are so. clever. I mean, who, how do you get these head? And, and who are these? I guess it's, it was for me, the college, because it's always, whenever I see a great pun headline, I'm always like, wow, that's incredible, but who is that for? Like, what is that doing? Yeah, you know, who is that for? And it's kind of, at some point, it's kind of for yourself as a magazine editor. That is correct. Let me give you the final one, because it may even be more strained. Remember the enemy, remember enemy of the state? Will Smith movie. Yeah. Gene Hackman, which was all about like, over. overhearing things, eaves dropping, all about eaves. E-A-V-E-E-S. That's the press box for this week. He is David Shoemaker.

Chris Almeida helps us with research. Jim Cunningham is our ace producer. More lukewarm takes about the media next week. See you then, David. See you later, man. I mean, listen, there was a lot of insanity. This is incredibly disillusioning. And this is such a freaking train wreck.

Frankly, I think I came into it with such high expectations that I was a little bit let down by the lack of absolute insanity. You should get that blame, right? I don't know. It felt like, it felt like when you hear about your friend taking a break in their relationship. Good work. You don't have the right to go to Miami. Nothing to say but, wow.