The Press Box - Trump vs. Schiff, Hacking Jeff Bezos, and 'American Dirt' | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss California Representative Adam Schiff’s statement at the impeachment trial (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (20:30), the hacking of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (23:15), the case of journalist Glenn Greenwald (29:15), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. The Oscars are only two weeks away, and the Big Picture is breaking down everything you need to know leading up to the show. Hosts, Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins take you through the favorites, snubs, and dark horse picks from this year's slate of movies. Tune in to The Big Picture on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. David, Hillary Clinton blasted Bernie Sanders this week. He was in Congress for years, she said. he had one senator support him. Nobody likes him. Nobody wants to work with him.

He got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it. What I want to know is what was Hillary Clinton thinking when she entered the campaign in that way? I have no idea. Like what possessed her to be like an insult comic at this stage in her career? I'm not quite sure. like if this had been

if this had literally been Triumph the insult comic dog like the puppet just came out and just sort of running down Bernie Sanders would we be okay with it I'm not I'm not sure I can't really would judge the material on its merit it's kind of hard

what was she thinking do you think she was just trying to get ahead of the Joe Rogan endorsement of Bernie was that possibly on her mind and now I feel like every time it's like someone claims it got caught in a hot mic I just can't believe it anymore because she just had the mic right in her face

and knew that she was being recorded and said like the like the like the most hot mic things you could have possibly said. I don't know. This is so bizarre. We're the Clinton body count of media podcasts. This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here.

Lots and lots to get to today. We'll talk about the hacking of Amazon chief Jeff Bezos by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. We'll examine the case of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who's charged with crimes in Brazil, plus an Oprah endorsed novel comes under attack, listener mail, and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's start with the Senate trial of Donald Trump. Earlier this week, we asked who will be the Democratic Knight in Shining armor who makes his allies inside and outside the media swoon?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you California Congressman Adam Schiff. Colonel Vindman said, here right matters. Here right matters. Well, let me tell you something. If right doesn't matter, if right doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn't matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn't matter how good or bad or advocacy in this trial is. It doesn't matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is.

If right doesn't matter, we're lost. If the truth doesn't matter, we're lost. David, what did you make of Schiff's performance over the last three days? He's been really impressive. I mean, I feel slightly embarrassed to say that I can kind of see what I'm supposed to see at Adam Schiff all of a sudden, right? I mean, I thought that that speech, I guess last night, right, that was the closer yesterday, was impressive and, you know, moving by, whatever normal definition, I guess, we would use for that. But I wasn't as wowed by that as some of the, well, the earlier parts of that same speech

and his performance for the past few days. You know, I thought that last night was an important, I thought that that clip that we just played was an important, was important in so much as like people are looking for a clip to play, right? People are looking for a moment, quote unquote, moment to have happened. And I think that, I mean, I literally saw people addressing it as such. on the news this morning. I think I saw Chuck Todd say,

yeah, I just wanted to, that he wanted to focus on that because he thinks that Adam Schiff may have had a moment. And I think, but I do, but I do think Adam Schiff's been really impressive. And at times,

especially, you know, in the lead up to this, you know, Senate trial, he's, he seems a little bit stiff at times. And,

and, uh, never, it didn't always strike me as the best communicator for this. But, but I think that, I think that I read him wrong. Now,

you know, meanwhile, Chuck Schumer's out here giving daily press conferences that have not changed my opinion of Chuck Schumer at all. But I thought Schiff has been, you know, has been really good. And it's clear that he's making an impression, which is an incredible, incredibly difficult thing to do in the current political climate. Yeah. I mean, he does have, he was an assistant U.S. attorney. And he does have that kind of process. prosecutorial bent to him. You say it's a little stiff. You're right. But it's almost that you need the stiffness. You don't need comedian guy up there, you know, getting off a bunch of great lines. You need a guy who's delivering the evidence, who's laying out the case. And I think the stiffness actually works to his advantage because, you know, he can sit there and when he's bothered by something as he was in that clip talking about truth and are we going to let truth

sort of seep out of politics? Totally. You can feel the hurt, right? And it's like it matters to him. He's saying in that clip and basically over the last three days, this shit matters. We can't let Donald Trump do this.

And just turn a blind eye. And that's very much a prosecutor's sort of pitch, but it's really worked. and you know I think it's funny because there's all these democratic impeachment managers right and at least at the outset there seemed to be this idea that they would all get a chance to talk more or less equally and then somewhere along the line the Democrats wisely decided let's just let Adam Schiff talk a lot or let's let's give a lot of our time to this guy because he's actually

making the best case I think that's right I think that he's that he is you know emerged as as I mean, I think it's important that the Democrats have a single voice, you know, or at least a unified voice in this whole thing. I think that obviously the goal would be to get some Republicans to cross the aisle and vote, you know, to remove President Trump from office, I guess. But like, I'm not sure that that's a realistic goal. You know, I've long thought that I think that almost the best case scenario is to get the Republicans to sort of settle on an argument. If you can somehow force their hand for the Republican side to be unified, that actually makes the argument and, you know, the public opinion argument easier, right? Because I'm not sure that actual, you know, removal from office is conceivable.

But having a unified voice on the, on the Democratic side is, you know, it seems to be really effective so far. Yeah, he's playing a losing hand, isn't he? The Democrats are not going to win, almost certainly, the trial. So what's the point? What are we doing here? And how do you prevent Donald Trump from taking his exoneration and spinning that into a victory? See, I won, right? You know, I won the trial.

Look, I'm innocent. I think, and I think the thing that shifts done that's so smart is to focus on showing that this is a sham trial to some extent. Yeah. There's all this evidence you're not seeing that the Republicans are not letting you see. Listen to how laser focused he's been on that particular point. The truth is going to come out. Indeed, the truth has already come out. But more and more of it will.

More emails are going to come out. More witnesses are going to come forward. They're going to have more relevant information to share. And the only question is, do you want to hear it now? You want to know the full truth now? You want to know just who was in the loop? Sounds like everyone was in the loop. You want to know how broad this scheme was?

We have the evidence to prove. The President Trump ordered the aid withheld. He did so to course Ukraine to help his re-election campaign. He withheld a White House meeting to course the same sham investigations. We can and will prove President Trump guilty of this conduct and of obstructing the investigation into his misconduct. But you and the American people should know who. else was involved in this scheme. You should want the whole truth to come out. You should want to know about every player in this sordid business. It isn't within your power to do so. And I would urge

you, even if you are prepared to vote to convict and impeach and remove this president, to find out the full truth about how far this corruption goes. Because I think, the public has a right to know. This is two sides talking past each other. I mean, you said it before the clip. You know, the Democrats aren't going to win. So Schiff is focusing on what the Republicans aren't letting us see. He's focusing on the investigation that's not happening.

The Republicans, for their part, aren't going to win on the merits. So they're making the whole thing about procedure or about, you know, just like tickety-tag fouls. they're much more interested, obviously, in, you know, running out the clock here. I mean, I don't even know if that's an appropriate phrase. They're like running out the clock after they've like themselves replaced the clock with an egg timer, you know, it's going to go off in two minutes. But I think that Shiv is making, is making the smart sort of a larger scale argument there, right? I mean, this is, if it's, if it's just about removing Trump from office, then it's hopeless.

if it's a bigger moral case, if it's an intellectual and moral inquiry, then there's a real purpose for this. And that's what I think the most, the best thing the Republicans have done so far is making this seem purposeless, right? Is making this seem hopeless. And to kind of reinvigorate it with purpose,

I think is a real win for Schiff and the Democrats. Been a couple of side notes that are worth exploring here. One is that the rules put out by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer before the trial began said that, quote, senators should be planned to be in attendance at all times during the proceedings, which means you should be listening and paying attention to the evidence as it's presented. And we've seen several comments, both from reporters and even, I think, from congressmen, former senators, things like that, that a lot of these senators do not actually know the details of the Ukraine plot.

They really don't. They have not been following it, which is just kind of incredible to me. So they're supposed to be there. And again, these are hours and hours just for the Democrats making their case. But there have been a lot of empty seats.

CNN reports that at 10.30 p.m. ET on Tuesday evening, the network counted roughly 20 empty seats. That is 20% of the Senate. As some members seem to have momentarily left the room, while others had taken to standing at the back of the room in an apparent effort to stretch their legs after hours of sitting at their desks. I found this so funny because the Senate finally has people

actually watching them work. Just imagine if your boss watched you work all day. Like the work product at the end of the day, David, the art for the ringer, whatever you did on that particular day, would be great. But a minute by minute accounting of what you did, you know, there'd be this little weird internet deep dive that really didn't have anything to do with anything a little conversation with just

and charity there that is basically the scrutiny the senate is being subjected to right now yeah and read a really low ebb right i mean this is i mean i don't want to like just have a bunch of like you know i don't have a bunch of like senate material prepared but like they don't do that much anymore right i mean there's not like their their workload is pretty light at this point in American history. And so it would like suddenly be forced to just have a have a microscope on you. Literally. I mean, just literally the entire time has got to just be brutal. But, you know, that's their job. Yeah. And there's a lot of yawning that people are noting. You know, it's like, oh, he yawned. Well, you know, it's, it was a late night, Tuesday night. So, so a little, I have a little

sympathy. Not a lot, but I know. I have, I have lots of sympathy. I mean, I think anyone, I mean, most people in 2020 can sympathize with like being called into a meeting. Either there's like an HR meeting or just like an all hands meeting where like the first thing out of the the boss's mouth is like no phones, no laptops and you're just like I don't know what to do. Like I literally don't understand what that means. Yeah, it's it's it's not fun. We should spend a moment on Trump's dream team of attorneys. Oh, which as of last week includes both Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr. Is there any doubt that? that Trump was directly inspired

by the O.J. Simpson dream team. I was actually thinking in terms of OJ before because that's sort of the defense here, right? I mean, like, there's no, if you follow, I don't mean, this is such a rabbit hole, I guess, but if you go through all of the efforts that Trump and the White House have done to like just literally conceal the evidence of this case

and not just like not letting people testify, but like the initial log of this call was thrown into the secret server. Like every step along the way, Trump's like, we're releasing the transcript. They don't release the full transcript. Like everything is like the evidence is so clear. But the case of the Republicans are making is basically the OJ defense, right?

It's like, forget the evidence. Forget your common sense. Forget your lying eyes or whatever. If the prosecution, if the prosecution is corrupt, then nothing else matters. Right? So they're making everything about how the Democrats have been trying to get rid of Trump this whole time. And if that is proven true, then it's almost like, then it's almost like, you know, nothing matters at all. But you're right

about the about, you know, the legal team. I mean, listen, when they announced it, it was just so ridiculous that if you had told me that like one of those names, one of the lesser names on that list was just like the name of the character that Wilford Brimley played in the

firm, I would have totally believed you, you know? DeVash, by the way, the character Wilfer Brimley. DeVashir is the character Wilfer Brimley. Thank you. Thank you for that. For the record, sir. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I mean, the, the crew is just, it's so, it's so wild. I mean, if we hadn't, if we hadn't lived with Alan Dershowitz for the past, like, you know, five or six years, I would almost be shocked that Alan Dershowitz would take the post, right?

Because just look around the room and you realize that like, this is your company, like, why on earth would you be doing this? But, you know, I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a pretty, it's a pretty, it's a pretty wild group. I know some of this comes with the job of being a defense attorney, but is Alan Dershowitz just trying to get ratioed as many times as any human can in like a five-year span? Yeah. I mean, I don't quite understand. I want you to listen to this little clip.

He was on Sean Hannity show talking about why if Trump is acquitted in the Senate, then the impeachment he suffered in the House shouldn't count. The other thing, Nancy Pelosi doesn't understand what impeachment is. What she has said is even if the president's acquitted, the impeachment stands. No, that's like saying that if a person is indicted and the jury acquits 12 to nothing in five minutes, he's still indicted. No, the impeachment disappears. The impeachment is only a grand jury presentment. The other thing, Nancy Pelosi, doesn't understand what impeachment is.

So that's not how this works. Bill Clinton was still impeached, even though Bill Clinton was not removed from office. Yeah. That is not erased. With all the time he spends on television, I find it hard to believe that Don Dershowitz isn't up on that point because that's been repeated over and over and over again.

But whatever, I mean, I guess if we're going to get in the weeds there and just say some stuff that's not true, I guess that's fine. Another great Trump legal team moment. Val Demings is one of the impeachment managers from Florida. made a reference to FOIA lawsuits, FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. Well, Trump lawyer, Jay Sekulow, misheard that as lawyer lawsuits. Not FOIA lawsuits, but lawyer lawsuits.

And boy, was Jay Sekulow pissed. Lawyer lawsuits? Lawsuits? We're talking about the impeachment of a president of the United States. duly elected. And the members, the managers are complaining about lawyer lawsuits? The Constitution allows lawyer lawsuits. It's disrespecting the Constitution of the United States to even say that in this chamber.

Lawyer lawsuits. Lawyer lawsuits. No, the Democrats were not objecting to a lawyer filing a suit. That was not the point of this. and of course as you point out the Trump defense is not whoops that was embarrassing the Trump defense was

no no we looked at the transcript of the hearing and he said lawyer lawsuits when the press viewed the transcript of the hearing lawyer lawsuits did not appear it only appeared when Jay Seculo said it oh my gosh

lawyer lawsuits I was whenever there's a big political story I look for the moment that all of us non-political, regular humans can relate to. And I think I found it in a tweet from Politico's Jake Sherman. I believe this was on Tuesday night, first long day of the impeachment hearings. And he writes this, David, massive bags of kudoba are being carried into the capital. Finally, I can relate to my senators and congressmen.

Massive bags, massive bags of kudoba. I think that's what I'd want after a couple of long days of hearing impeachment evidence. I'm going to do that as soon as this podcast is over. The more massive, the better. Before we get out of here, I don't want to let, I don't want to let our buddy Alan Dershowitz off as easily or uneasily as we already let him off. I was going to say, I was going to posit whether or not it's possible that being associated with Jeffrey Epstein is so bad that being associated as Donald Trump's defense attorney is actually like a step in the right direction. of this PR push. But I guess this isn't as much of a departure from Dershowitz's existing or you know, historical stand as I thought because he was, someone just tweeted out a quote from him

during Richard Nixon's impeachment trial in 1974, Alan Dershowitz was quoted by the AP as saying, I'm not happy seeing Richard Nixon's gang being tried by blacks and liberals in the district of Columbia. So, wow. Way to stay on brand. Way to stay on brand. The ratio is, it's come. It's just a permanent ratio. We just, it just refreshes itself every 24 hours. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Please send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received.

First one this week comes from our pal and critic extraordinaire Scott Tobias. It's about impeachment or about the Senate trial. There is a rule, apparently we learned this week. that senators are only allowed to drink water and milk on the Senate floor. You cannot sneak in a bud light seltzer. You have to just water or milk. When it comes to Utah's Mitt Romney, that's not such a chore because it was an overwork Twitter joke to write,

Romney filibustering by chugging whole milk for 12 hours. Thanks to Scott for that one. As former Manhattanites, David, this one is going to hit home. on Tuesday, the New York Post reported that Fairway grocery stores planning to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and that they would close all stores.

It was an overword Twitter joke to write all of the Upper West Side about to sit Shiva. Thanks to Isaac Chips. Fairway is denying that story, by the way, so stay tuned for more updates. Finally, David, I'm not sure if you saw the sad news that Mr. Peanut has passed away, by which I mean,

makes Mr. Peanut content announced that he or it had died at the age of 104. Now, this is just one of those naked, bad branding exercises that can only be rescued by a lot of bad jokes on Twitter.

Here are some of my favorites. According to longstanding New York Times style book conventions that reserve honorifics for living persons, Mr. Peanut will henceforth be referred to simply as peanut. Second one here, Mr. Peanut is in hell.

He spent decades as a smiling face of a company that sold the boiled and roasted corpses of his people as a snack. Wow. CNN, colon, Mr. Peanut has died. NBC colon, RAP, Mr. Peanut. Fox News, colon, thousands of deleted emails from Hillary Clinton indicate that Mr. Peanut

has direct knowledge of her plot to kill beloved rice mascot Uncle Benghazi. And finally, I looked at Twitter for 30 seconds and legit saw four Mr. Peanut Jeffrey Epstein. jokes. Thanks to Danny Nicklin and Jake Christie, DDS. If you made sure to prevent Mr. Peanuts death from being another meta brand thing, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. I want to start the notebook, David, by talking about hacking, particularly

the hacking of Amazon founder and president Jeff Bezos's cell phone. I guess that's not unusual in this day and age, but here's what's unusual. According to an analysis done by an outside firm, the hacking has been tied to a conversation Bezos was having on WhatsApp with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. The story was broken by the Guardian, but I'm going to crib here from a New York Times piece by Karen Weiss, Matthew Rosenberg, and Shirer Frankl. Follow along with me and jump in at any time. In 2018, Bezos and Prince Muhammad exchanged numbers at a dinner in Los Angeles. The Crown Prince, initiated a messaging conversation with Bezos that same day over WhatsApp.

Later in the year, Bezos got a video message from MBS's WhatsApp account that included an image of Saudi and Swedish flags overlaid with Arabic text. Now, I just want to pause right there because that is like my nightmare for my mom and maybe you have this for your parents. is that they open this email that has some weird image that doesn't make any sense and their computer gets infected and then they forward it to me and go, what do you think of this? And then my computer's fucked. So I don't think I really had that fear for Jeff Bezos in particular. But there you go.

After receiving the video, the Times reports, the amount of data exiting Bezos's phone increased almost 300 fold. and if we fast forward a month, a few months, excuse me, Bezos received a message from MBS's account that included a single photo of a woman who strongly resembled Lauren Sanchez, with whom Bezos was having an affair

that had not been made public. The photo was captioned. Arguing with a woman is like reading the software license agreement. In the end, you have to ignore everything and click, I agree. Now, wait a second. So this very high-level,

international hacking included a joke that is like on a meme or one of those old chain emails that went around. It's like something from the Borchbelt or something. Like I don't think it's very bizarre. I mean, maybe that renders it innocuous

seemingly enough that you would just like click open, but that's just such a weird, weird come on. It's very strange. Dude, whoever was hacking Bezos's phone, did they think he would just think that was like normal? That that sound? Wouldn't that be so much more suspicious?

I mean. Times goes on to say at the time Bezos and his wife were discussing a divorce, which would have been apparent to someone reading his text messages. You'll also remember Bezos's Medium Post a couple years ago when he recounted his interactions with the owners of the National Enquirer. Well, there was a second occasion, David, on February 16th of last year, two days after Mr. Bezos took part in a phone conversation about the Saudi's alleged online campaign against him.

He received a message. message that read in part, there is nothing against you or Amazon for me or Saudi Arabia. So he was talking about this on the phone and then he weirdly and coincidentally gets a message. One of the UN experts spoke to the Times and said his hacking, meaning Bezos is hacking, appears to have been driven by his ownership of the Washington Post. Of course, you'll remember that murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi worked for the Washington Post. what do you make of any of this? I mean, is this, I just feel this is one of those,

if this had been in the Jean Lacari novel, we would have been like too much, you know? I don't even, I don't even believe this could possibly be true. Yes. I mean, it's sort of wild. I mean, and it's only, and it's also just the kind of the what's, the WhatsApp portion of it is weird. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, their tech moguls use WhatsApp to communicate more than I do, which would, which is never. But yeah, I mean, it's weird to, it's weird to think that Jeff

Pezos of all people doesn't have some sort of like powerful encrypted phone that he's working off of and that he's just like accepting, you know, cold calls from diabolical tyrannical tyrannical government. I mean, it's just so strange. It is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Yeah. You know, it's not, you can understand how that you would probably take, you would, you would take the call or read or open the attachment. You know, but I guess not. And if this is all true, it's also Supreme, like, really interesting that like, that MBS is like putting himself out there as, you know, not just like, you get the phone number and he's going to pass the number on to one of his cronies and, and distance himself. Like they came straight from his account, right? And he's just like, yeah, I'll be the face of this hacking enterprise.

Like, why the hell not? It's pretty bold. We should note the Saudi embassy called the charges absurd. But there is potentially more to this story. Ryan Grimm over at the Intercept tweets, Jared Kushner chatted regularly with MBS on WhatsApp. It is near certain that MBS pulled this same hack on Kushner and Saudi Arabia has therefore had secret access to his phone for years. Trump forced his security clearance through it. whoops

Ben Hubbard, who is the New York Times is Beirut Bureau Chief and actually has a new book about NBS coming out in March tweeted this. It wasn't just Jeff Bezos one month after his reported hack

operators linked to Saudi Arabia tried to hack my phone too. Wow. So there's that. On Wednesday, Bezos tweeted out a pick of himself at a memorial service for Jamal Khashoki, the aforementioned murdered journalist.

No text on that. Just a photo. Here we are. I want to talk to you about Glenn Greenwald, David. Oh, yeah. Journalist lives in Brazil. He was charged this week with cyber crimes by government prosecutors there in Brazil. Greenwald is a big critic of Brazil's president, Heir Bolsonaro, and the intercept, which

Greenwald founded, had earlier published embarrassing cell phone messages about an anti-corruption prosecution, which landed Brazil's former president in jail. Greenwald says, of course, he was just merely publishing the messages. The Brazilian government whose claims should be treated extremely skeptically, says Greenwald, quote, played a clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime. It's worth noting here that Bolsonaro has targeted Greenwald for a long time and even mused about putting him in jail. Greenwald says in an interview with the New Yorker's Isaac Chotner, there are a lot of people

in government, beginning with the president himself. who explicitly want a resurrection of the military dictatorship that rule the country until 1985. They are not joking about it. They are genuine authoritarian who don't believe in democracy, don't believe in basic freedoms, and don't believe in a free press, and all they know is brute force. He goes on to say, neither my husband nor I nor our children have left our house in the last year without armed security, armored vehicles, teams of security.

We get death threats all that. the time. I don't know that I have a lot to add here. I was my ears or eyes, I guess, perked up when I saw people tweeting in defense of Glenn Greenwald. And basically, everybody on Twitter has had an argument with Glenn Greenwald, usually started by Glenn Greenwald at some point. Yes. But all the tweets began, I don't always agree with Glenn Greenwald but dot, dot, dot, is that the silliest thing you've ever seen? Like if Glenn Greenwald had been, been laid off. I think you can begin the tweet.

I don't agree with him, but I hate the fact they lost a job. I think you should have a gag or something. I think when somebody is charged with crimes by an authoritarian government, you don't need the I don't always agree with Glenn Greenwald precursor to your tweet.

Yes. It's just okay to go right to I don't want the authoritarian regime to charge him with crimes. Like, this is bad. Yeah. This is right we we can just i just love when twitter just sounds i love it when journalists try to sound like the people they're covering the kind of formal like i don't always agree this is not a statement you're putting out just just say that these charges are bullshit and that he he he shouldn't be subjected to this totally agree totally agree it's a scary

situation and you know as always i mean glen greenwald i don't always agree with glen greenwald myself but, you know, he certainly has a lot of guts to put himself in the city. He knew what he was getting into. And I mean that in a positive way. He had the guts to do what he did. And, you know, best wishes for him. And let's hope that nothing bad happens. Elizabeth Warren put out a statement saying the Bolsonaro government is pursuing state retaliation

against Greenwald because of his work as a journalist to expose public abuse and corruption. Brazil should drop these charges immediately and stop its attacks on a free and open press. One more story, David, before we get to Listener Mail. It's a fascinating story from the book world about American Dirt. Oh, yeah. Which is a new novel by Janine Cummins. It was bought for more than a million dollars.

Sandra Cisneros praised it. Don Winslow compared it to the grapes of wrath. How's that for a blurb? When I tried to click on an impeachment trial clip on the New York Times' website, I was greeted with an American Dirt book trailer that was narrated by Oprah. Wow. Which means you really made it.

There's a great piece in Slate by Rachel Hampton who writes, an increasingly vocal contention of Mexican and Mexican-American writers have pan the novel as trauma porn, pointing out myriad inconsistencies and errors in Cummins' descriptions of Mexico that a largely American,

non-Spanish-speaking industry of agents, editors, and publicists seem not to have been able to notice. The book is about a woman who flees Mexico with her son after the rest of the family is killed by narcos, comments who identifies as white, grappled with the idea about whether she should have been the one to write this story.

I don't know if I'm the right person to tell the story, she told the times. I do think that the conversation about cultural appropriation is incredibly important, but I also think there's a danger sometimes of going too far towards silencing people. Everyone should be engaged in telling these stories with tremendous care and sensitivity. So I think we can put that argument on one side of this, right? Does she have the right to write a novel like this? Which you knew was going to be a question. She, I believe, wrote about it even in the book and in authors afterward or something like that.

That's one thing. The amazing thing about American Dirtwood, that's enough of a controversy to float articles for weeks and weeks. there was a controversy about the writing about American dirt. Miriam Gerber wrote a negative review in Ms. She apparently was then told she didn't have the standing to write such a negative review. And wound up publishing it elsewhere. Both her piece and Ms.'s decision caused an uproar. Yeah.

The New York Times' daily book critic, Perul Seagal, wrote a pan of the book saying the real failures of the book, dot, dot, dot, have little to do with the writer's identity and everything to do with her abilities as a novelist. Then the Sunday Times book review also reviewed it. That sometimes happens, though usually with big books. That review of American Dirt was written by novelist Lauren Groff. It was a more mixed review, but for some reason, the New York Times sold it on Twitter as a rave and included a sentence that was not in the final review. that's bad

Lauren Groff later tweeted obviously I finished my review long before I knew of perules anyone who has gone through edits knows the editing timeline but hers is better and smarter anyway I wrestled like a beast with this review the morals of my taking it on

my complicity in the white gaze so she essentially after having her review misrepresented on Twitter then sort of semi disavouted or talked about like, I just didn't even want to review this book. Yeah.

Woo. There's a lot to go over here. Anti-publicity rollout. Please, as a former book guy yourself, tell us what to make of this. I mean, there are a lot of things to grab onto here. I mean, starting at the end, I mean, Lauren Groff is a fantastic writer,

and I'm sure a very competent reviewer. I mean, the big, I mean, the issue here, which is obviously a product, of all the other issues that led to this point is her just getting kind of caught up in the publicity machine, right? And that's not specific to her. You can see that in the reaction

that Ms. gave to a negative review that was presented to them. You know, most book reviews, by and large, even in the August pages of the New York Times, are relatively complimentary, right? I mean, if they earned a spot, it is, it is, you know, being reviewed at all is a positive,

I mean, it is a positive sign, right? It's a positive indicator of the value of the value of the book. And certainly there are pans and certainly there are every review spends a paragraph taking issues, usually the second to last paragraph, taking issues with the shortcomings of the book. But, you know, if you're going to review a big novel, by and large, the space is reserved for encouraging people to read, you know? I mean, and some people would see that as a, as the greater good and the more important thing there. And, you know, that's certainly their right to think that. But

you know it's I can't I guess I can't get away from I mean I agree with with the New York Times Daily Review and that it's not really an issue of whether or not about the writer herself I think that how to say this

I mean no one is a bigger fan and you know this Brian I mean you know this about me I mean no one's a bigger proponent for like you know genre fiction can be literary fiction than I am, right? I mean, like, it's not, we don't need to, like, ghettoize everything that is not John Steinbeck or not Jonathan Franzen or whatever and, and try to separate it out into some other category. You and Andy Greenwald are the two, are one A and one B on that corner. That said, if this was not presented as a major American novel, if there was not a comparison to

the grapes of wrath on the cover of the book, I feel like a lot of the, I feel like a lot of the kind of shit talking that's gone on since would be a little bit more reserved, right? I mean, it certainly wouldn't have risen to the level that it's risen to. I mean, does she have the right to write this book? Of course she does. Like, anybody can write this book. You know, I mean, anybody could write this book and if it's put out as a mass market paperback and it focuses a little bit more on the bizarre love story between the protagonist and the drug lord that she meets in Mexico, then this is a totally different kind of book, right? I mean, it's just that the problem is being presented as great literature. I mean, the afterward that you mentioned where she sort of admits

to reservations about being the voice for the book was, I believe, appended at the last minute to the book. It was a sort of a late move in the publication process. I mean, I have a lot of sympathy for everybody who's involved in this, but I think one of the biggest, I mean, involved in the machine process, but it's still on them, right? I mean, there's just too many books, too many books from, there's, too many people are being influenced by what they've heard before about the book, right? I mean, the praise that this book has received is probably largely due to the praise it received previous by Don Winslow or Stephen King or or Sandra Cisneros or whatever. And those are probably like, you know, influenced by the blurbs that came before as well.

I mean, I'm sure the entire reaction to the book, the million dollar plus advance was driven in large part by the beauty of the agent's editor, the agent's letter when he sent the book out, right? and the jacket copy or the catalog copy was influenced by that copy as well. And all of the blurbs are probably influenced by the letter that the publisher sent when they sent the galleys out. I mean, everybody's just being influenced by this preconceived notion of what the book is. And it took until publication for someone to actually grapple with the contents of the book. Well, there's a couple things here, right? One is that it's hitting immigration at a time when people are thinking.

to read and I haven't read the novel so I can only I can only say you know wax so poetic on this but according to the pieces and the times it is a very non-political thing on immigration right it is it is about you know it is it is as close as you can get to something that would appeal to people on both sides of the spectrum here this is about this is a human story rather than a political story about immigration that's number one number two as you said it's getting a lot of flak because it flew too high. It got the Oprah seal of approval. And that whole point about who has the right to write a certain novel, that comes out partially because the novel is so successful. Who is this, this woman writes this novel and she gets the Oprah, you know, the touch of God from Oprah. By the way, Don Winslow, whom I think both of us like has lots and lots of characters from Mexico in his novels, right? and characters who are part of the cartels and things like that or in or around the cartels. So, and I don't remember that conversation happening about him.

And I don't know if that's because he was safely and more in genre. And this is kind of, as you said, stretched into literary land a little bit. He started in John, he started with both feet and genre. And over the years, it's just sort of like, you know, climbed halfway over the fence a little bit, just in terms of how his books are presented. But yeah, I think that that safety net from his, in set from the beginning is what's, is what made it easier for him. It was a really good piece by Alex Shepard in the New Republic, who talked about the kind of media part of this. And he said that, I thought this was really interesting, that

Groff's review kind of pointed out a weakness or sort of a tick, I guess, in the Times book review itself. People should understand there's two different ways books are reviewed in the Times. There are the daily reviews done often by Segal or Dwight Garner, both of whom are awesome. And then there's the book review you get on Sunday. And as Shepard, pointed out, when you have an event novel like this one, the review is almost always given to another novelist. And the novelist tends to be on balance nicer than professional book reviewers. So when you talk about how so much of this is preordained, that's another thing, right? If somebody's really going to go in, that would be pretty unusual for the book review,

not unprecedented at all, but that would just be, that would be very different. So once you're, once you get that big, once you get event novel status, then you are kind of given event review status, right? Yep. And that carries a whole different, you know, set of expectations than just Dwight Garner or Pruel Segal sinking their teeth into the book and the daily paper. Absolutely. I mean, it's sort of just like, you know, Loring Gauph is like presenting this is like presenting the, uh, presenting the green jacket or whatever, you know, I mean, you're inviting, inviting her into the club. Or I guess, you know, if you want to take another sports metaphor, I mean, there's so much of the fiction reviews in New York Times is just sort of like the players only broadcast, right? I mean, no one's just like dogging on anybody too bad because they were all there six years ago or six months ago or whatever it was. So it can be entertaining. It can certainly be insightful in a whole different way, but it's not, it's just not the same thing. And, you know, to confuse those two sorts of reviews

to confuse their sort of inherent obligations you know it's not the right way to look at it let's do a little listener mail this comes from our pal Aaron Schaefer she says question about Twitter journalists frequently tweet out the money shot or takeaway of an article they've written

this means I frequently don't need to click on the actual article seems like bad business practice thoughts? What do you think about that? I mean, I personally find myself reading more articles if I feel like, I mean, in those situations, if the money shot or whatever is great, that will lead me to actually want to engage in the whole thing because I enjoy the process of reading. But certainly, I don't think it's hard to take exception to this. It is bad business practice, right?

I mean, I think that the smart thing to do would be to post the big takeaway post the last paragraph, but like blur out a couple of words or something, or just on, have it cut off in mid-sentence. I don't really know exactly the best way to do it. I mean, it's a, I don't know what you think. It's a cliffhanger. Yeah, no, I just, I'm always entertained by this whole kind of etiquette of how to tweet out your articles because what Aaron's really talking about, I think, is the second time people tweet it out, right? Yeah. You're the second and third and fourth time because you're coming back for another bite at the apple. I mean, the first time is I, I, I wrote an article about Donald Trump.

Whatever. I wrote an article about American dirt. It's pretty straightforward. Yeah. It's when you get greedy that these things come in. There is a sports writer who often tweets out his leads, like a screenshot of the lead. Here's my lead. Uh-huh.

And let me, I think I can report fairly confidently, it gets made fun in a lot of press boxes for doing that. Like, this is my lead. You know, there is right. There's the money quote that, that Schaefer. talks about that kind of stuff. To me, to me, an ideal second tweet. First of all, never tweet your own pros. That just

seems ridiculous to me. I'm not going to blur myself. You know, like what? I just don't, I don't quite understand that. To me, the ideal second tweet is an interesting quote from the piece. Right?

So maybe it is the money quote or something, but like, I'm going to go through my own piece. and I'm going to find like a kind of provocative quote that could stand on its own as a tweet that for people who have not seen it or saw it and didn't read it yet, we'll draw them in.

That's how I justify it to myself. Well, and that practice in itself exists largely because we've determined as a culture that it's like either inappropriate or less than ideal just to constantly retweet the original tweet about the piece that you've written, right? Who has determined this? This is what people do all the time.

You have to come with something new to validate the second tweet. That would be the organizing idea. And there is an argument for sort of ownership here, right? I mean, because if you have a great pull quote in your piece, somebody's going to tweet it out, right? Or, I mean, if nobody tweets it out, then did you even write it? It's a tree fall in the wood situation. You know, I mean, that's the validation that your great line is waiting for. And if someone's going to tweet it out, it might as well be you.

So you can get those retweets and likes, right? I mean, you shouldn't just like give those away to something. some to some, you know, other journalists just because they, they were the first one to post the quote online. Well, you could do a whole show on this. We really could. And maybe we totally should. Once the primaries are, we're just going to talk about how to tweet your stories out. This one, David, another letter comes from Hugh Hopkins, sent this to us after the killing of Qasem Soleimani when Trump was threatening to strike Iran if they struck us. Hugh writes, I love this, this email. the 52 sites Trump wants to target as a metaphor for the 52 Americans held in Iran from 1979

strikes me as a type of listical an editor asked for that matches an arbitrary number. Are there even 52 credible sites worth targeting or is the military now scrambling to add extra sites to a list just to make Trump happy? It reminds me of terrible articles that have come out of nowhere. Can you produce 20 sports predictions for 2020? or who can put together the top 54 snacks for Super Bowl 54. You're really reaching for the last like nine of snacks for sure. Right.

I mean, do we think like the Joint Chiefs of Staff are like, oh, we only got 31 possible targets in Iran, then we're not going to strike anyway. Can we get 21 more because this is what the listical demands? I know it's a really serious situation, but I kind of think Hugh is right. and that Trump was just going with this really strange catchy number and that's really terrible. I don't want listicles

determining American foreign policy. That's somewhat less than ideal. Finally, a multilingual note from Michael Salerno. He writes, David, can you please translate the following sentence? I think it's correcto. Let me pull out dual lingo right really quick. I believe that the translation for that

is, I think that's right. I think that's right. You need to vary it up. We'll break out Spanish or anything you need. All right, time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strain pun headline. Okay. Last Friday's headline attached to a circular bank building in Texas that was slated for demolition was it won't be round for long. As usual, our listeners are funnier than we are.

David Carpenter says, circular bank architecture in real picture. You'll remember the architect's name was Durwood Pickle. Oh, my gosh. Eric Lloyd says, what goes round must come down. Speaking of the OJ Simpson dream team, that's worthy of Johnny Cochran. Today's headline, David, is about Gritty. Yes, Gritty, the ubiquitous mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team. If you aren't on sports Twitter, Gritty looks like animal from the Muppets if he used a curling iron.

That's all I can say. Listener Tyler Koch sent along a piece from the Philly Inquirer, which is about a man who took his 13-year-old son to a flyer's game. They got to meet Gritty and take a picture. I'm quoting from the piece, in the man's telling his son playfully patted the mascot on the head after the photo was taken. As his son walked away, Gritty got out of a chair, took a running start, and punched my son as hard as he could, the man said.

The article used the immortal line. The dispute has crossed. from he said, gritty said into the realm of law enforcement. He said gritty said. Anyway, Ryan McCarthy sends in a gritty themed, strained pun headline. It was in the Metro paper that I guess you get for free in Philadelphia. It showed gritty behind bars while it laid out this very strange situation. I want you to think about gritty's rights as a defendant.

what was the Metro's strained pun headline? Gritty as a defendant? Well, potential perp, I guess. Are we going to get a gritty perp walk here? I mean, let's, yeah, a gritty perp walk. Gritty, I mean, I got it. I mean, nitty gritty, true grit. Like what am I trying to do here?

Grit, um, gritty on the stand. behind bars gritty on trial I don't know you're going to have to help me out here I got to get something like I said what are the rights of the accused that we treasure in this country

the right to remain silent the right to an attorney the right to a defendant is innocent until proven gritty oh there we go innocent until proven gritty you should probably

you should probably click on this to get the full effect. Oh my God. This is fantastic. Innocent until proven. The great tabloid style. It's like all big like white with black outline meme font and then gritty is like red and italicize. It's fantastic. I'm pretty impressed with the Metro for coming up with that. I don't remember the Metro being, you know, New York Post level. But innocent until proven gritty. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Erica. and Chris Almeida.

Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Tuesday with me from the Super Bowl with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Yes. Lawyer lawsuits? Yeah. Lawyer lawsuits?

Yeah. What do you think of this? And then my computer's fucked. Oh, my gosh. Can you please translate the following sentence? Um, Hillary Clinton blasted, David. Nobody likes him Nobody wants to work with him

David got nothing done He was American dirt There's a lot to go over here It's all just baloney And I feel so bad That people got sucked into Thoughts You have to come with something new

Thank you Thank you for that Whoops It's like something from the Borscht belt or something Like I don't think this is very bizarre I mean