The Press Box - Trump Gets Impeached, the Democratic Debates, and 'Star Wars' | The Press Box

Episode Date: December 19, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker talk about the impeachment proceedings of Donald Trump (03:05), the stakes of the upcoming Democratic debates (26:38), the new 'Star Wars' film dividing critics and fans alike (33:20), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Over the holidays and into the new year, we'll still be publishing new shows to keep you up to speed with the NFL playoff race, the NBA, and award season. We've published some great episodes in the month of December, including two rewatchables on Happy Gilmore and the Godfather Part 2. Chris interviewed watchman showrunner Damon Lindeloff on the watch, and the Ringer NBA show ranked the top 25 players of the 2019-2020 season so far. Lastly, happy holidays from The Ringer. David, sports talker Mike Francesa says his new show on radio.com will feature as much political talk as he wants. What I want to know is if that show were happening today, how would Mike Francesa approach Donald Trump's impeachment? Oh, man.

First of all, I just want to give unlimited amount of credit to Mike Frances's decision to do politics on his new show. Absolutely. He discussed his fascination with the subject, as well as decrying the current landscape of news media, how there's always everybody's got a bias. There's got the left on one side and the right on the other side. Nobody just calls it down the middle. I'm glad it does take somebody who's made a career of criticizing umpires, I guess, to call things down the middle. but I don't know. I mean, listen, anytime that you're like,

anytime that you say you're going to call things down the middle, you're obviously lying. I don't know. What would be the right take here? I feel Frances is actually more frank about this than a lot of his sports friends. Because I feel when you see, you know, sports Twitter, sports writers, they're desperately grasping for the nonpartisan impeachment take. Right.

Like, wow, what a sad day for the country. Something like that. Because you don't want to piss off those Trump fans who are in your audience. But I feel Francesa has not really held back. I mean, this guy is, this guy is, you know, I don't know if a fan of Donald Trump is fair, but he's very interested in Donald Trump. He's not, he's not totally Trump averse. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, but it's going to be,

so the answer is going to be something that about, you know, with the prospects for the next election, right? Does it first take O us an impeachment segment, David? Yeah. Why limit this? Yeah, I really want to know what Mike Greenberg has to say. I mean, I do, I think that there's... That would be, that would be a nonpartisan take.

100%. If we can get Jalen back on there just to have them go head to head over the impeachment, I would be deeply interested in what was going on. Now, I think, for you right, Frances is going to be, Frances will say the Democrats got it over their skis or, you know, got tripped over themselves. And, you know, the Republicans didn't look much better, I got to tell you. But, you know, at the end of the day, if this gets, if this gets Donald Trump fans buying tickets, then, you know, it's a win-win.

It's probably going to be better than anything on the Brian Williams show on MSNBC. We are the minkman of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. You've got Brian Curtis and David Shumaker of the Ringer here. We were going to hit you up after the Democratic debate tonight. But David, when the third president in American history gets impeached, you change the schedule. President Donald Trump was impeached on Wednesday.

Obligatory mention that the other two presidents to have been impeached. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. David, we'll get into the play-by-play of a very strange day in Washington here in a second. But did you have any basic reaction to what you watched yesterday to the fact that Trump was indeed impeached by the House? I mean, I don't know if there's a basic reaction, an overarching one. I think I was I was simultaneously impressed and and shocked by the Republican Party's sort of unanimity in making this an argument about procedural rules and utterly ignoring the actual charges. I mean, and I do mean, I'm serious about being impressed. I mean, they've all sucked to the script and done a very good job.

of making this seem like, you know, we've said, you know, we used the phrase working the refs before. This does feel very much like a very reasonable argument against procedure at times. And frankly, I'm, you know, I guess you could say a similar thing about the other side of the aisle, that they've, that they're palpable caution and, you know, the structure of their argument and the, and the, you know, the way they structured the entire proceedings, you know, they did what they set out to do. But the whole thing, I guess if you want an overarching, an overarching, an overarching.

overarching view. I mean, the whole thing just sort of landed with a little bit of a depressing thud to me. Maybe I'm just too far down the hole. I will say it's been striking this whole time from the very first time we heard of the whistleblower, I should say, that the reaction from Donald Trump, from the White House, from Republicans has been, yes, he did it. Yeah. Yes, I did it. Here is a transcript showing that I did it. If there was any ambiguity in the transcript, I'm going to go on the white. House lawn and just repeat it. And Mick Mulvaney is going to stand in front of a mic at the White House and confirm that I did it. And maybe we'll take it back in some, you know, half-assed way a day later. But we're just going to go ahead and say, we're going to go ahead and admit all the bad facts here. Yeah. So then as you say, we have this day of Republicans. And by the way, there was some procedural stuff. But, you know, when I dipped in and out of the speeches, it was mostly just trashing Democrats. The socialist Democrats have wanted to. And by the way, there was some procedural stuff. And by the way, there was some procedural Democrats have. to do this for three years.

And now they're just getting around to it. I mean, that was the argument I heard anyway. Yeah, I mean, and I kind of looped those things together because the main takeaway is what you said. It's not an argument about the merits of the case. Although, you know, they were sort of unwilling to admit. I mean, obviously, they're not going to say out loud, yes, he did that thing. And I think that's sort of what's unsurprising, but sort of most, I don't know, in some

level galling about the white house's response which is this is the same this is the same plan of attack that we've seen from them time and time again which is sort of admit that you did something wrong but then walk it back and talk around it to the point that it sort of clouds the issue and sort of normalizes it in a way right and i think what's interesting here is that they did walk it back is that you know mulvaney it was the perceptions that he spoke out of school even though out of turn even though he was saying what we all believed to be true And, you know, Trump's admissions can you take them for what they're worth. But, you know, he'll say that the, that, you know, he didn't do anything wrong, that the conversation was perfectly good.

The transcript they released was obviously edited. And I think that it is, I mean, I've said this before. I think that, like, yes, it happened and there's nothing wrong with that is the best defense for what happened. I'm not sure that it stands up to legal scrutiny, but I'm definitely sure that, like, you know, majority of the American public would be happy to buy into that, at least for the, on some. very like basic level. If you're playing a bad hand, that that is that is the best of the bad hands they could play. And so it's a little bit shocking to me that they didn't say that more full-throatedly. But I understand why.

Like I said, this is the regular, this is the standard playbook and they, you know, we probably shouldn't expect anything different. If you want to hear the difference between the way Democrats were talking from the House floor yesterday and Republicans, let me give you a few examples. Here's Adam Schiff, Democrat from California and chairman of the Intel Committee, who of course has been a key figure in the entirety of the impeachment process. Listen to him speaking yesterday. The president and his men plot on.

The danger persists. The risk is real. Our democracy is at peril. But we are not without a remedy prescribed by the founders for just these circumstances. Impeachment. The only question is, Will we use it? Or have we fallen prey to another evil

that the founders forewarned? The excess of factionalism, the elevation of party over country. Many of my colleagues appeared to have made their choice to protect the president, to enable him to be above the law, to empower this president to cheat again, as long as it is in the service of their party and their power? They've made their choice.

Despite this president in the White House stonewalling every subpoena, every request for witnesses and testimony from this co-equal branch of government, they have made their choice knowing that to allow this president to obstruct Congress will empower him and any other president that follows to be as corrupt, as negligent or as abusive of the power of the presidency as they choose. They have made their choice, and I believe they will rue the day that they did. And David, from the Republican side of the aisle, here's Mike Kelly, representative from Pennsylvania. December is such a great month, and there's so many great dates in December, and we talk about the wonderful things that have happened in December's of the past. There's also, in addition to Christmas being something we celebrate,

the Boston Tea Party took place in December, but also on December 7th, 1941, a horrific act happened in the United States. And it's one that President Roosevelt said, this is a date that will live in infamy. Today, December the 18th, 2019 is another date that will live in infamy. When just because you hate the president of the United States and you can find no other reason other than the fact that you're so blinded by your hate that you can't see straight that you've decided, the only way we can make sure this president doesn't get elected again is to impeach him. So impeachment, David, is Pearl Harbor. I mean, in his defense, it was, you know, not comparing them one to one so much as infamous days in the month of December, I guess.

Yeah. Do you think his piece of paper that he had in front of him just said riff on the month of December? It's like one of those calendars with a historic things that happened and he was just ripping them off. Let's see what we got. Oh, Pearl Harbor. That's vaguely analogous to what's happening today. Again, if you've got a bad hand, you guys hate the president and that's the only reason that you're doing this, I guess has a certain ring to it. I mean, that's sort of when your inability or unwillingness to engage with the facts, the situation, just make everything sort of fall flat, right? I mean, comparing it to Pearl Harbor, whatever other comparisons you're going to do are just so plainly empty.

I don't think anybody is compelled by that, and I don't think any of it's any more. outrageous than just pretending that there's no, I mean, that there's no actual, you know, impeachable offenses having been committed here. It's, the whole thing is just sort of nonsensical. Well, you may think that's outrageous, but Representative Barry Lauder Mill, okay, three-term Republican from Georgia, here's your Pearl Harbor comparison and says, wait a second, wait a second, I would like to attempt an even more outrageous comparison, or let's say equally nonsensical. comparison. Here he is from the House floor yesterday. Before you take this historic vote today, one week before Christmas, I want you to keep this

in mind. When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers. During that sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded this president and this process. I kind of leave the biblical analysis to you, David. Oh, man. But, you know, yeah. Yeah. Did not necessarily think Pontius pilot name would come up yesterday. Though I guess if we had had the cousin-sale betting odds, we could have gotten like a thousand to one Pontius pilot. You could have put some money. You could have put some action on Pontius. Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, I just said it, when everything is already so inane, should we really be that surprised? I mean, I just don't know. I guess if any, if you want to be shocked and surprised by something, it's that these Republicans, I mean, once the decision's been made to blindly support the president, I mean, you think that the MO at that point would be to stay as far away from anybody typing down things for the history books as you could, you know,

just to sort of like cast your vote and then get the hell out of town so that nobody remembers that you were there at that point in time. But clearly, when you get on the Senate floor and you start evoking Pearl Harbor or Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ, you've decided not to take that attack for sure. when I hear those kinds of bits and also Trump's six-page letter that he sent to Pelosi on Tuesday railing against impeachment, I just think, oh, wow, this is going directly into the inevitable Rick Pearlstein book about Donald Trump. 20 years from now, we'll be like, did that really happen? Do you read Nixon land and stuff? There's all these little nuggets and you're like, whoa, what? that ran in a newspaper somebody said that because you know you know the master narrative but you're just always surprised by how weird it was at the time that stuff will go right into that yeah and we'll be like wow that happened that really happened i saw claire mccaskel on msnbc a little bit yesterday and she was doing the kind of you know typical both sides argument of you know i didn't find either party's speeches on the floor of the house persuasive to the americans

people about their impeachment. Is anybody really trying to persuade anybody at this point? Is anybody going on to the House floor saying, I'm going to speak directly to the American people, one, that they're actually going to be watching this and listening closely to what we're saying. It feels to me like we're just doing what we're doing at this point. Democrats may be trying to make the case, and as you say, put themselves down in the history book, here's what we're saying, here's why we did this. Republicans may be trying to, pledge fealty to Trump slash get reelected, whatever. I don't know, go viral. I don't know. Nobody is trying to to appeal to anybody here. That's, that's way done if that ever happened at all.

Appeal to anybody on the other side. Yeah, just your hypothetical, like, viewer who's trying to make up their mind on impeachment. Yeah, no, I don't think they're trying to appeal to anybody who's undecided or who's movable, no. I mean, like, I don't, I don't mean to be dismissive to, But when I say that clearly the only people that anything Republicans are saying is appealing to is the president and his most ardent supporters, right? I mean, that's that is that that is their audience. I mean, the audience is people who would be who could be persuaded to not vote for you if you don't seem to be sufficiently compliant with the president's, you know, wishes. The first article on abuse of power passed 230 to 197. The second article was, which was obstruction of justice, passed 220.

to one 98, both votes taking place in the evening yesterday. The only real oddities were two Democrats voting against both, Colin Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew, the now famous slash infamous party switching congressman from New Jersey. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine, decided he could support abuse of power, but not obstruction of justice. So he voted yes on the first one and no on the second one. but maybe most notably, David, was our old pal Tulsi Gabbard. Yeah. Who voted present twice. She didn't vote yes.

She didn't vote nay. She voted present twice to further complicate the picture of Tulsi Gabbard that we are all trying to grapple with. Another big moment yesterday, at least meme-wise, was Nancy Pelosi banging the gavel and then quickly shushing Democrats, excuse me, who were cheering. and one of the motions, one of the articles of impeachment had passed. I also notice this. Somebody put up a picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton back in 1998 during impeachment,

heads down emerging from the Oval Office the day that Bill Clinton was impeached. And I don't know why, but that image is always stuck in my mind because whatever you think of that impeachment, it's this image of Clinton, at least ceremonially accepting the gravity of the moment. Trump, of course, was

totally different. First, there was a letter we mentioned to Pelosi they delivered on Tuesday. Last night, he was at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, and he got to riffing on the subject of Representative John Dingell, Democrat who served in the House of Representatives for nearly 60 years. He's the longest serving House member ever. He died in February, and his wife, Debbie, is now in Congress. She voted for impeachment, and Trump is mad because he claims he made arrangements on the late Congressman Dingell's behalf after his death. And now Debbie Dingell is insufficiently thankful to him as evidenced by her impeachment vote.

Listen up. I don't want anything for it. I don't need anything for anything. She calls me up. It's the nicest thing that's ever happened. Thank you so much. John would be so thrilled. He's looking down.

He'd be so thrilled. Thank you so much, sir. I said, that's okay. Don't worry about it. maybe he's looking up, I don't know. But let's assume he's looking down. But I gave him A plus, not A, not B plus, Dppy. I gave him the A plus.

And she called me so, and I, oh, I won't go into the conversation because it's not fair to do that. But all I want to say is, let's put it this way. It was the most profuse, thank you, that you could ever get on a scale of zero to 10. It was a 10. So, hmm. Speaking of the Rick Pearlstein book,

the president responded to his impeachment by suggesting that a deceased member of the house is in hell. Yeah. For one thing, I mean, just like why, like why, like why is that where his mind is? You know? I mean, even like taking away

that just the object of defensiveness of it, I mean, like why would that, like, I don't even... It's pretty down the middle Trump, isn't it though? It is, it is. But that just goes to show, I mean, there's, you know, there are all the reports. about his obsession with this impeachment because of how it affects his legacy, apparently he was still holding out hope to be on the Abraham Lincoln George Washington

tier of American presidents, and this might damage that. You know, there's a, there's the, there are the reports that there's the letter that he sent out that you mentioned, the six page letter or whatever, that he, uh, apparently spent an entire week with Stephen Miller and, and others composing it, uh, that, that, you know, that's the amount of time that we, that we, that was spent on that. kind of thing. I'm not to say that you shouldn't, again, take this sort of take these charges seriously, but that that was the, that specific letter was the, was the focus of the time. I think it's just a matter, I mean, these comments as well, you see, he's over and over again

with him. The focus, the places, the, the moments where he chooses to obsess or spend time or even just discuss in public forums where his time is very limited. It's just, the decision making is really, really weird. We talked about the relative smallness of impeachment this time around or the way it feels small in our giant overgrown media world that we live in. Jim Windolph had an interesting piece in New York Times about the way the networks covered that last night. CBS cut away, he says, from the proceedings for the season finale of the long running reality competition show Survivor. So CBS was not sticking with this. They were going to Survivor. ABC did the same thing so that they could show.

the Norman Lear reboots of good times and all in the family. It was only NBC that was willing to sacrifice Windolph-Rates, Ellen's greatest night of giveaways to show continuous coverage of impeachment. Here's also a great paragraph, David. I want to get into a time machine today and take this paragraph back to the early 90s and see what part of it people would be most surprised by. Are you ready? As the vote went through on the first article of impeachment,

ABC broke into good times with a special report led by anchor George Stephanopoulos, a banner at the top of the screen declared President Trump impeached. So would our hypothetical early 90s citizen of this world be more surprised by President Donald Trump, President Donald Trump's impeachment, news anchor George Stephanopoulos, or the fact that good times was still in the air in some form? Yeah, I think all those things are probably a bad equal. In bad impeachment coverage, New York Post ran a picture of Nancy Pelosi. Oddly?

The headline, It's Your Funeral. Swamp Mistress Pelosi dresses in black for historic vote. And then above that is a headline that incidentally President Trump impeached. Yeah. That was weird. There's been a lot of pushback on the word woke lately. Well, Rick Santorum was on CNN. And he declared that House Republicans in 1998 were, quote, pretty woke to impeach Bill Clinton, given the way the Me Too movement headed after.

Is that the official end of the word woke? I do. You touch it on it a couple of times, but the sort of performative sadness, while I totally understand it has now re. It's not just the Democrats who are insistent upon the gravity of the situation. And it is a grave situation, no get me wrong. but the presentation of it is such repeatedly. The tamping down of the applause is obviously the right move, but just everything.

This is repeatedly every time they pop up on television, it's, listen, this is a very, this is one of the most serious moments in the history of our country. But now that's seeped into the Republican talking points too, that the level of sadness that they feel for the actions of their, of the Democrats across the aisle are, is, is rivaling the sadness the Democrats are feeling it, having to have been forced to go through with this impeachment.

Yeah, there's a whole lot of sadness to take in. My favorite tweet of the night, breaking, President Donald Trump becomes the first WW Hall of Fame inductee in American history to be impeached as president. That was from Travis View. Speaking of funny tweets, segue, 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. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. First of all, blanket award to anyone who did the twas the night before Christmas. Christmas bit for impeachment.

Here's Bill Crystal. Twas the day of impeachment and all through the house. No Republican was rebelling. Each was a mouse. And here's Frank Bruny. Twas the eve of impeachment went all through the house. No Republican wavered each one a louse. When I was editing the newspaper at our high school,

the Panther Red, David. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I outlawed poetic parodies. And also April Fool's Day. stories. Never ever do this. Thanks to T.J. Wander Slug. Elsewhere, an impeachment humor. It was an overwork Twitter joke to look at last night's house tallies and write Trump finally won the popular vote.

Thanks to Mitch Goldidge for that. Also an overwork Twitter joke to write Donald Trump has finally achieved something that Barack Obama did not. Thanks to Rajan Revest. Headline from the New York Post, David. Dinosaurs may have been poisoned before the asteroid hit study reveals. dinosaurs may have been poisoned before the asteroid hit. So many great responses, my favorite of which was, did an asteroid write this?

Thanks to Scott Tobias. Oh, that's fantastic. And finally, David, yet another much-talked-about headline in the post, Missouri church leader tried to pay for sex on Grindr with an Arby's card. Wow. Missouri church leader tried to pay for sex on Grindr with an Arby's card. It was an overwork Twitter joke to say, we have the meats,

but perhaps even better, sir, this isn't an Arby's. Thanks to Thorzell, Misty Mountain Hodd, Ben Gibson, and Jonah Baleckis. If you gave new life to the tired, sir, this is an Arby's bid. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, Dave, before we do the notebook dump, let us break for a quick commercial message. For over 115 years, ORIS has been making purely mechanical watches in Holstein, Switzerland. Staying true to a rich heritage orris is one of the few Swiss watch companies to remain independently owned and operated.

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It's always a great time to buy a new watch, but the holiday season is even, quite even, possibly the best time. The most perfect opportunity to give someone with a suave new watch, check out O-R-I-S-D-C-H-slash-P-P-Box to find Oris watches that match your style. that's or i s dot c h not dot com slash press box all right david in the notebook dump want to at least nod at the other big thing today which is the democratic debate takes place at eight o'clock eastern time tonight from los angeles by the way if you're doing that cheap traffic attracting what time does the debate start post you are obligated to tell us how long it lasts we

That's what we really need to know. And the answer tonight is three hours. Oh, man. Sigh. We're going to have seven Democrats, which means the notable absences are Corey Booker and Julian Castro. Castro, by the way, is in the I don't give a shit mode. Yeah.

He's now running an ad in Iowa saying that Iowa should not be the first caucus in the nation. I think the old reference is Bullworth, but nobody cares about Bullworth anymore, right? I'm not going to win, so I'm just going to be a truth teller. A couple things I'm interested in tonight. Tell me if you agree. One is impeachment because I feel in the run-up, we've done this kind of obligatory bit at everything where they go around and ask the Democrats, so what do you think of impeachment?

And the Democrats say what you're talking about. It's very grave. It's very somber, but we have reluctantly come to this conclusion. I don't care about that anymore. I want to ask the Democrats, so President Trump has been impeached. How do you take that fact? and communicate it to the American people during an election. What were you going to do with that?

Because there's been all this talk about all the politics of impeachment. I really not even that interested in that idea. I just want to know what are you going to say to the American people that's going to make this make sense to them and put this into the case that they should vote for you rather than Donald Trump. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Corey Booker, who, like you said, is not going to be on the debate stage tonight. I saw him on TV briefly today.

And he made not exactly the point that you're talking about. But I thought like a weirdly, like a counterintuitively compelling case for impeachment by saying like I hope he doesn't get impeached because I want to debate him. Right. Like it's not like I'm a, I think he called himself a baller and basically and said like, you know, it's like it's not it's not the same win if you don't have the, if you're not if you're not facing the best competition. But, and basically, but, but yet this impeachment is necessary. right so i mean it's that's there's a there's a actually kind of compelling logic compared to some of the other uh attempts of logic we've been hearing but you're right that's like i want lSU to make it to the to the final of the college football playoff because we want to beat the best team yeah exactly

essentially what he's saying exactly okay i think that you're asking the right question and i think that it's not just a matter of of politics or like who's running who has the best you know writer is that they're working for their campaign or ideas people but i do think that's that's a that's a that's a question that that everybody should be asking and i think it's a question that's actually you know the american public is probably grasping for that that answer as well right and it's and it's incumbent upon our leaders or our prospective leaders to to help lead us because there's not you know you said that people aren't aren't aren't trying to reach out across the aisle or no one's trying to convince anybody of their motivations in this thing and i think that's true but i think

that even so there's a lot of assumption that everybody's that every that everybody's complaisance or I guess mistaking complacency for um you know ideological firmity or whatever I mean it's like you there's people do need to know the answer to that question and I would really be interested to hear like you said what what some of these candidates have to say the other dynamic tonight that I'll be watching for is Pete Buttigieg versus everybody because we have ramped up you know I thought at the last debate November kind of expected people like Warren, people like Bernie Sanders to go after Buttigieg. They really didn't.

And now feels like the time because if you don't, Pete Buttigieg is going to win Iowa. And it's going to, that is going to mess up every, you know, a whole bunch of campaigns, but I think probably Sanders and Warren's, uh, Sanders is, excuse me, and Warren's most notably. So it's hard to imagine a debate tonight where Buttigieg doesn't take. a ton of shrapnel. And then again, the question is, like it was with Warren when it was her turn a couple of months ago, how does he respond to that? And do these attacks about, you know, the transparency of his campaign, about his health

care plan, about whatever you want to, however you want to go at him, does that stick? I don't really know at this point, you know, if it has to him. But again, like I said, that will be something I'm looking forward to seeing tonight. I mean, Buttigieg has been in the line of fire for a bit, but I think that the inevitability spiral that we're in right now, I mean, certainly nothing's inevitable. And, you know, people will continue to pull out various polling from elections past to show that, you know, nobody's dead in the water.

But it does feel like the closer that we get to Iowa, the more stories become about stories, you know, the more kind of self-referential all of this polling and all this political cover. becomes that the buddhajegh's uh polling right now does have a certain does have a or enough of a feeling of inevitability to it that people are going to have to go really strong people are going to have to make decisions people are having to make these sort of all-in decisions earlier than they have in camp in in in campaigns past the buddhajuch can't thing is is really interesting though because we talked about his time as sort of a uh consultant in dc that was that was sort of hazy the the big

of this week, at least unlike ringer slack, was that it came out that he and S&L's Colin Jost were Harvard dorm mates, which also just kind of weirdly goes to that same story of like, how does everything that we didn't know about Pete Buttigieg, like, paint him as a totally different person than we, not necessarily a bad person, but as a totally different caricature than the one that we had been embracing. I'm not sure if, I'm not sure if S&L parodists need to have conflict of interest disclosures, but Colin Jost had been playing Buttigieg on, on SNL the whole time. But, I mean, that's just

an incredibly weird, I don't know if coincidence is even the right word. But yeah, I mean, it's, it will be interesting to see to what degree the consultancy and even, I mean, I'm sure no one's going to bring up Colin Jostry, I assume they won't, but it's going to be interesting to see

how much these new revelations kind of factor into this Buddha Judge versus everybody situation we're in. I want to talk to you briefly about Star Wars takes this is a non-spoiler discussion because you and I haven't seen the movie yet. But I feel if you look at the American media right now,

the three most popular content opportunities are in order. Star Wars takes, number one, number two, Katz takes, and number three, impeachment. And it's definitely in that order. We're probably going to all end up watching Star Wars, though, which I think maybe the difference

with cats and most of the impeachment proceeding. Yeah, you know, I just watched that guy talking about the crucifixion on Twitter, but I'm actually going to go to the theater to see the rise of Skywalker. A couple notes about this that are interesting to me. A whole subgenre of Star Wars take

was kicked off by this Dave Itzkoff piece about The Rise of Skywalker. If you don't know Dave Itzkoff, he is like the Ishiro Suzuki of profiles, entertainment profiles. He just go, I mean, he is going. It's every time I just come up to bat

and I'm on base. Always interesting. He had this quote from J.J. Abrams, who directed the first of the new movies and now has come back for the third of the new movies. He was talking a little bit about The Last Jedi, which was directed by Ryan Johnson, and I'm going to quote here from Itzkov,

Abrams praise the Last Jedi for being full of surprises and subversion and all sorts of bold choices. That's a quote. Quote, on the other hand, he added, it's a bit of a meta approach to the story. I don't think that people, people go to Star Wars to be told this doesn't matter. Even so, Abrams said the last Jedi laid the ground for the rise of skybork,

and quote, a story that I think needed a pendulum swing in one direction in order to swing in the other. A couple of notes about that. It's obviously a legit thing to be interested in because you have this strange tension of one director starting the story, a second director taking the story in another direction, and then the original director coming back. we are also just desperate for any kind of, I think, any kind of quote, any kind of reveal about the two different creative approaches to the movies.

And I feel that just unlocked this whole thing that has been around, but it gave new life to this whole thing of what's the right approach to these new movies? Was it the JJ let's reheat everything you liked about the old movie, and kind of just change the order of things, create a few new characters, or the Ryan Johnson approach, which was, let's do some of that,

but let's also cut off any kind of obvious story avenues. Ray's parents, man, they're not the Skywalker thing. It's just a nobody. Snoke, this character, you're all excited. And now he's dead. We're done with him. That to me has been,

I think, like the biggest take is maybe the wrong word, but single biggest area that people have argued about. And it was just so funny to see it burble up again because of that one quote inside this big piece. Yeah, I mean, I think it was in some ways inevitable after the last, the second, the last movie was, you know, had, I guess so divisive, at least amongst the sort of diehard fans or the most like vocal online fans. And also in the, especially, I guess, in the age that we live in now where, you know,

Disney sort of owning the box office full stop were probably, over the thing where we just complain ad nauseum about the, uh, just sort of over like test marketification of mainstream movies or of big blockbuster movies. Like everything is just supposed to be, everything is just sort of sanded down to this sort of, uh,

like anodyne B plus. But, um, but I, but we are, I mean, if we're, if we're beyond that, then we kind of thought we,

we find ourselves in this new world in which we judge the test marketing. You know, we, we judge the too many, the too many cookness of the whole thing, you know, and just try to figure out which cooks should have been given more of a voice. And I'm not surprised that we're here,

but I guess on some level I'm surprised that we're here at the expense of like, hey, just make a good movie being the answer. You know, I mean, I know that it's never that simple, but I don't think we'd be having the same conversation if either of the first two movies had been, I mean, both those, I mean, the first two movies of the new trilogy had been even like five or ten percent better,

you know, and they weren't bad at all. I think both of them were definitely have their supporters and have their positives, but it is a weird world we live in. Maybe it's just because, I mean, this last one is, it doesn't seem to be getting, doesn't seem to have any sort of, you know, anybody terribly,

terribly excited amongst those who have already seen it. I think what you identified is, is part of this larger thing that's happened. I don't know if it's lately, but it's certainly over the last decade or two, which is autourism. running wild. Mm-hmm.

Like, everybody being so focused on what are, what are Ryan Johnson's signatures within the Star Wars movie? Mm-hmm. What are J.J. Abrams's signatures? What is, what, what can the showrunner of this popular television show? What was he or she trying to do when they made the show? And I'm all for that, I guess, but I think a lot of times people just get lost in that as opposed to the important question, which you just said, is the movie?

good. Is the movie effective? Does it, is it worth seeing? Is it worse seeing? If it's worth seeing, is it worth seeing twice? And we get wrapped up in these, in these, in these guys, and they're mostly guys, I guess. I have found that it's not just movies, by the way. It's TV. It's literally anything. It's all about when we when we talk about these things, it's all about the creators intentions and the creator's signatures. And at some point, again, I'm all for that. But I even see this with like sports TV executives and things like that. You know, oh, what is what is he trying to do here?

What is his master plan? I'm like, who gives a shit? Is the movie any good? Let's talk about that secondarily. Let's first talk about did we enjoy this thing? Yeah. I don't know how we quite got there, but it's an interesting place. It is interesting.

I mean, just to say that the obsession with autort as you put it, and in a period where, like, theuteur is, you know, seemingly entirely sublimated to the machine. Although I will say, I mean, I guess that one of the, you know, really bizarre ticks of this, of the rollout of this new movie is the sort of decision to trash Ryan Johnson's movie. I mean, by just about everybody, I mean, every cast member and person involved in production that says anything.

So I guess the implication is that Johnson certainly had more of an Autor's power than I would have assumed. Or it's just a convenient way to sort of, you know, June out publicity. Who knows? We'll leave most of us to the big picture and the watch and the real professionals here. But I'm amazed that there was no, nobody when they set out to make these multi-bazillion dollar movies, that nobody knew what was going to happen in the movies.

Right. that it was all like, okay, you make the third one and let us, or the second one and just let us know how it turns out. That's so weird. And maybe that does activate all of our instincts about wanting to understand how that got made and the choices making because there was, again, as you say, for like something that seems to be a very, very much a all hands on deck studio product, that there were these weird choices within them that totally. change a trajectory. A couple more points about Star Wars in the sort of larger media context. One is

as somebody like you who has grown up literally our whole lives with these movies. I'm amazed at the how should I put this? The smallness of Star Wars now or how it

just seems like another movie in the context of all this stuff. It's still going to make a ton of money. It's still going to generate a lot of words and a lot of takes, as we've already seen. But to some extent, it feels like another big sci-fi movie or another big genre movie now. In a way, I don't think it's ever felt before. And I don't know if that's because stuff like Marvel got so good. And in many, many cases, much better than Star Wars stuff or stuff like Watchmen, which just ended, or if it's just that, like, the culture is so big now

that, you know, nothing really stands out. But that, that's kind of amazing to me. Because I don't know that I ever thought we'd be quite there. I think you hit every note. I mean, it's, I think if they can be as successful as Star Wars as they are with Marvel, then that is an unbridled success, at least for the, you know, Disney shareholders and everybody that has a monetary investment in this. I don't and I and I think that you know we've seen the minor moments of trepidation in the productions of you know Rogue One or solo or whatever like anytime they anytime there's any any whiff of deviation that's the greatest concern but I think that that all and and anything if Disney with Disney in charge I think it's always going to seem a little bit part of the monotonous you know barrage of all their giant movies and I love them all don't get me wrong but I think but you're you're right. I mean, I just don't, I think now that we're at the third film of this new trilogy and, and what, the sixth, fifth or fifth film of the, of the new Disney era, I mean, it's going to, of course, as soon, as long as they're mass producing these, it's going to feel,

it's going to feel like just another, just another incredibly huge, culturally significant movie. To that same point, remember when George Lucas ruled the galaxy and going all the way back to Return of the Jedi with the Ewoks, there was this thing that, you know, George Lucas really isn't a filmmaker. He's kind of a toy maker who also makes movies. He's trying to merchandise Star Wars. He puts Ewks in the movie

so he can sell the figurines to kids, which you and I both owned back in the day. I saw this come across the wire the other day. Disney Plus has ordered the game show Star Wars Jedi Temple Challenge,

the game show. Oh, yeah. Ahmed Best, known to fans for playing Jar Jar Binks, will serve as the host. That's from variety. So there was, back in the day, there was this almost intolerable amount of commercialism creeping into the Star Wars universe.

Now, in the hands of Disney, we have a game show hosted by Jar Jar Binks, a Star Wars game show. And nobody really cares about that anymore. No. No, I mean, listen, when you put it like that, my mind immediately went to the game show of our youth legends of the Hidden Temple, just because there's a similarity in the names. I don't know if you remember that, but it was like a double-dare-style, like maze and craziness game.

Vaguely, yeah. And if it's anything like that, I'm going to watch eagerly and dream of being on the set. I think that we're okay with Star Wars actually being parceled out into these sort of subsets. If there's stuff for the little kids, then maybe people like us hold out hope that there will be more things like made more for us.

even if it's just like more rogue ones or something like that. And also you have the build, I mean, obviously, I don't think this game show is going to, you know, enhance the lore or expand the universe of Star Wars. But there are a lot of things. I mean, there, you know, there was the Clone Wars cartoons and stuff which sort of rolled out as something that didn't seem like it was for maybe people like us, but it became a sort of enriching part and a wonderful part of the universe.

So, you know, give the kids their game show. I'm excited. it's funny that like the people that are i i would say a couple of things like our generation of film critics i think mostly speaking i'm speaking pretty broadly but i think i can generalize and then the people who are kind of into nerd culture they just aren't bothered by commercialism in the same way no and it's whether we're because we're the generation of stephen spilberg and george lucas whether we just don't care they never grew up into those adult film critics who say i love movies. I love art. I love

even whizban contraptions like Star Wars, but I hate the marketing side. I hate the commercial side. They just don't, they're just not bothered by that in the same way. And in fact, I would say they actually like commercialism, a lot of them. Right? They like it because it's a content

opportunity. They want baby Yoda memes. You know, they're again, that whole story about how dumb was Disney because they didn't make the baby Yoda doll. Who cares? Right? Like, are you getting money for the baby Yoda doll? Is that going to affect your 401 K. But a lot of people, I would say not only aren't bothered by commercialism, they, they're all in on commercialism, right? Because commercialism means more content. It means more

movies. It means more chance to weigh in on that stuff. And that's a big, big, big, big change. I think, again, for quote unquote, establishment criticism that we've seen in our, in our lifetime. It's fascinating. All right. David Schumacher guesses a strain pun headline. Great. Is it going to be Star Wars related? It is. Oh, really? How'd you know? We were just talking about, I'm excited.

I'm thinking about Star Wars. Now I'm excited. Tuesday's headline about a wave of penis fish that washed up on a beach was Johnson Landslide. Today's headline comes from Jonah Baleckis, who always sends us great stuff. David, it's from the New Zealand Herald. It's about Star Wars, as you say. And I would say it's a wistful remembrance of a lifetime of watching Star Wars movies

going all the way back to the original trilogy. I don't really know how to set this up for you because it's mainly just funny. But I encourage you to start with Princess Leia's adopted home planet. Where is she? Blown up in a new hope?

Alderan That's right And then I encourage you to PUN on that What was the New Zealand Herald Strainpun headline Alder Alderan All the

Alderan's All the All the wrong move All the All the All the wrong Getting close What is it

All the wrong These close folks Alderon places All the wrong question Alderan All deron reasons What might you be looking for In all deron places?

Oh looking for love In Alderan places Oh my gosh Looking for love in Alderan places That is the best thing we've done yet That is so good Congratulations Who did that one?

Where is that from? The New Zealand Herald New Zealand Herald Yes Thank you New Zealand Herald You win the 2019 Press Box Strain Pund headline award I feel like

That's great He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Steve Alman. We're back Tuesday with our year-end show. That's it, folks. 2019 is over, which will necessarily feature more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.