The Press Box - Trump's Border War, Woj Dunks on the Draft, and Johnny Depp's Profile | The Press Box (Ep. 487)

Episode Date: June 26, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker sit down to weigh the images we see of immigrants at the border versus the tweets we see from Donald Trump and his allies (03:00). Then they dive into ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski tipping picks at the NBA draft (26:00) before closing out the show with a look at the Rolling Stone piece on Johnny Depp and the state of the celebrity profile (39:15). Credits: Hosted by: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Produced by: Jim Cunningham Brought to you by: The Ringer Podcast Network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pressbox fans, Sixth offers a whole new rental car experience. At Sixth, you can rent top quality cars like the 2018 Jaguar F-Type at affordable prices. Six locations can be found in major cities like Miami, L.A., Las Vegas, Atlanta, Dallas, Philly, Seattle, in an over 105 countries internationally. Head to 6.com to find a branch near you or your next destination. That's 6th, S-I-T-com, 6th, drive first class, pay you con. economy. David, ABC News briefly reported via Chiron that Paul Manafort had pled guilty to five charges of manslaughter before the network later apologized. Oh, no. What I want to know is, is there anything I can add to that? No, no. I got nothing. I saw that and I said, that's the cold open for our show. And I have nothing funnier than the fact that that existed.

There's nothing to pivot to, really, is there? No. I think we were talking about in the office earlier. Is there like, should we have some kind of Tyson zone exception when a media company goes completely nuts? It's not really libel or slander if it's just so ridiculous, right? Wait, are you talking to the Tyson zone that like the news, like the Chiron was so bizarre that it's too bizarre to offend, basically? The ABC News Kiron was in the Tyson zone. Not the Tyson zone of like any news that came out of the Trump, Russia investigation,

broadly defined at any moment is believable. Yeah, that's kind of the problem with this, right? It more begs the question, what news about a Trump official would you not believe at this point, no matter how ridiculous? Oh, man, I am going to not answer that question. I'm going to assert my

Fifth Amendment privilege, and let's move on to the bulk of the show here. We will strive to remain libel and slander free on the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. The Pressbox is the media podcast where you are allowed to tip draft picks. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. Your ringer syllabus for today. If you're still decoding Sunday's West World finale, check out the live postgame show,

starring David Schumacher, along with Danny Hifetz's five pressing questions about the finale. On the NBA free agent front, you can read John Gonzalez on who's running the Philadelphia 76ers and our pal, Justin Verrier, on the 10 biggest questions of the off season. And also read Molly McHugh, one of my favorite ringerites, on the phenomenon of rage giving in the age of Trump. But David, I've got three topics for you today. First of all, the images we see of immigrants at the border versus the tweets we see from Donald Trump and his allies. Yeah. Scenes from a 21st century media war. Second, we'll discuss how ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski dunked on the NBA draft. And finally, we take stock of Rolling Stone's new piece on Johnny

Depp and the State of the Celebrity Profile. Love it. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, I used to write a little bit about immigration, and I found, David, it was always hard to get people, including left-leaning people to pay attention to immigration stories at all. But thanks to the Trump separation policy and the images that has thrown off, America's eyes are now completely glued to what is happening on the border. Yeah. And in detention centers across the country. But I thought we'd do a couple of things. Let us look at the images that have come out from the media. Yeah.

And then let's look at some of the images and statements that would come from the White House after that. So first of all, I think the biggest one, a week ago Monday, ProPublica obtained from one of the facilities where immigrant children being held this tape, which was the sound of children. As ProPublica put it, we hear also the baritone voice of a Border Patrol agent. booming above the crying, well, we have an orchestra here. He jokes, what's missing is the conductor. That led to a few things.

Ted Liu, the Democratic Democrat from California, played the audio on the floor of the house. Same with Robert Menendez in the Senate. Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine actually played it during a White House briefing. That just felt like such an arresting moment during this. I mean, is it just why it was so resting? Is that just a simple question to answer? because it was so kids crying out. Yeah, I mean, there's...

There's a million, you know, adages in the political sphere or just, you know, in life in general that apply here. But it's sort of the, just, you know, a picture's worth a thousand words. And as much as easy as that is to scoff at, you know, good audio or video

is obviously worth a whole lot more. You know, there's... Sometimes it feels like in 2018, mean, you know, a good meme is the thing with the most power or something like that. But this sort of fit the bill for both. I mean, but I honestly think that, like you were saying, the immigration issues, it's really, it's really hard for the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans to be interested in because it doesn't affect you day to day.

And the ways that it does affect you, it's invisible, you know? And, you know, to have heard about this policy, to have heard about what's happening, you know, it was kind of trickling into the conversation. And I think just the audio was, I mean, just iced it sort of. I mean, no pun intended. But it was, it just made it all very real at all at once. And the fact that it was one of the first things we'd heard from inside these centers, because the government, of course, is tightly restricted access. There were some sort of small tours given to the press, right? But they couldn't take pictures.

and then the question was, do we print the government's pictures? Because is this a real, you know, are we fooling our readers by not being able to go in and get photographs? Yeah, I think MSNBC had some video footage prior to the audio, or at least that was a sequence in which I saw that Jacob Soberoff was there doing some video stuff. And, you know, I mean, it somehow didn't have the same power. I mean, it wasn't video of children's crying for one thing. And you're right, this is sort of like government access issue. and even that it sort of went down this weird

fake news rabbit hole of like whether or not there were there were murals of Trump all over the place and what I know it's easy to get distracted or there was some child actors thing which is just inevitable right now it's it's so it's so easy to get distracted and somehow this audio just cut through all the Trump would like you by the way to be distracted

sure um Jack Schaefer of Politico my old boss writes this he says Trump can reliably win the battle if it's fought with words, but against images and descriptions of distraught and traumatized children and parents, Trump's superpowers fail. Really good, really good point. And I think that was so interesting about this because he has, you know,

even, you know, whether Trump is winning is kind of a dumb thing to say, but he always has a very good job of containing the conversation. Sure. By just bulldozing his way through, tweeting through it as we say. Yeah. You know,

going and giving strange speeches or whatever it is. And this was one of the few. cases where, you know, within days, right, all of a sudden it was like, you know, he's insisting, look, I can't do anything about this by executive order. The Democrats in Congress have to act, which both turn out not to be true. But then, you know, within a couple of days, he's like, oh, I'm signing an executive order because I'm not winning this one, right? This is, I'm taking on massive amounts of water, even by Trumpian standards. And we had to have to do something. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's interesting.

that, I mean, I think that Jack's point was really smart. I must say I was still surprised that he acted when he did, the Trump acted when he did, because it did sort of feel like there was this invincibility to his, you know, insistence upon this, you know, insistence upon his inaccurate vision of the world being true over and over again. He's strange, though, because on the one hand, you're right,

he does have this, screw it, I'm just going to do this kind of mentality, but he also isn't like, you know, particularly, you know, he's not bent on anything exactly, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he's happy to withdraw it. Absolutely true. And I think it's important. I mean, you can easily imagine how Trump could, just as we were, I was saying before, as you were saying before, how this issue, you know, this tape made it easy for people to humanize this kind of like abstract political issue that that would have affected President Trump as well. Yeah. I mean, we saw the strangeness, right? It was even as this punitive policy was going on, he and certain members of the administration wouldn't claim it was their policy.

Yeah. So on the one hand, he's totally invested in doing something that seems, you know, not only awful and heartless and immoral, but politically suicidal. And on the other hand, he actually doesn't want to do that or he actually doesn't want to commit fully. Another striking image was the womp womp heard around the world, as I believe you called it, This was Corey Lewandowski, former Trumpite on Fox News. He was with the former senior Democratic National Committee advisor Zach Petconis and was talking about a girl with Down syndrome, Petconis was, who was separated from her mother. And this is what Lewandowski said. I mean, look, I read today about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage.

I read about a, they just say want want to a 10-year-old. a 10-year-old with Down syndrome being taken from her mother? How dare you? How dare you? How dare you? When you cross the board illegally, how dare you? So, I'm sorry. I'm just a tad speechless. That, um, and that was just, that was just pure, I mean, maximum heartlessness, right? I'm like, oh my gosh, it's, it's like, it's like a, it's like a sound effect. I don't know. Okay, again, to take an un- take it like a like a you know uh different point of view i was a little bit surprised that he got as much flack as he did or that or at least i mean again this might have had a lot to do with the fact

that trump did reverse course on this and that this was an opening for everyone to say this is this is the bridge too far or whatever you want to say there but it was it was incredibly heartless and incredibly just inhumane um but like do we expect better of corey Lewandowski, you know? I guess the fact that he took as much fires he did for that, that was a little bit surprising to me. But yeah, I mean, I guess at a moment like this, just like

when the, as the audio is, the audio of those children crying becomes the symbol of this whole thing, he became the symbol of the administration's, you know, heartlessness about it. Yeah. And he sort of did this thing where he didn't quite apologize.

And, you know, sort of blame the media and everything like that, which is you know, pretty much part for the course here. Exactly, yeah. Another image was the one that wound up on the cover of Time magazine. Speaking of symbols, yeah. Striking image that was taken by a photographer named John Moore of Getty images. Time puts it on the cover next to a photo of this little girl from Honduras.

Time puts it on the cover next to a photo of Donald Trump. So that was amazing magazine cover before we got into the fact-checking portion. As an art director, that was, I can say. wasn't a very arresting, very powerful image. It turns out that the girl, though time did not say this on the cover, the girl, was not separated from her mother. Carlos Ruiz was one of the Border Patrol officers who encountered her, said that he asked the mother to put the girl down for two minutes while she was searched

and stuff like that, and then she was allowed to pick her back up. The girl's father, Denise Javier Varela Hernandez, later came back and said that he said he was proud of his daughter and she represented the subject quote of immigration and he asked Trump put his hand on his heart and hopes to change the policy. So this was one of those instances where there was a powerful image. Trump seized on an apparent inaccuracy. I'm not actually sure what's inaccurate about the, you know, the girl is clearly so it's not, I guess it's not the Mac. it's not the single heartless Trump policy we're talking about, right? But any immigrant child that comes over the border is facing a new immigration regime in the form of Donald Trump.

Yeah. So I wasn't to, I mean, I guess you ideally would have used a different picture. Oh, sure. You would have ideally used a different picture because I think that this is a response for better or worse that's been, you know, that we should have been expected, right? But this is, I mentioned fake news earlier, this is the sort of distillation of the fake news argument, right? It's not that there is actual fictional news reporting that is going on out there. It's the, you know, I'm going to pick one dangling thread from this story, go wall to wall on like, you know, the Donald on Reddit. People are just going to like dig into this thing and prove one tiny thing is false and thus disqualify the entire argument.

prove that the medium makes mistakes. Right. Which is we already knew. But all of that just flies in the face of common sense, right? Ideally, this would not be the image that one would use because, but only because this is an expectable outcome, right? It's not like, there was nothing, this was not photoshopped in such a way to make you believe that this photo existed of Trump and this kid together. Trump was not on the border. They were, yeah, starkly cut out onto a red background.

You know, this scene did not take place regardless. Um, everything next to it on the magazine rack is have, is, is, is photoshop within an inch of its life, right? From men's fitness to vogue to everything to, to whoever's on the cover of entertainment weekly. No, no surprises there, right? I don't need to like, we don't need to like, like, stay, have, hold a press conference to inform the world that like, no, Muhammad Ali was not actually shot by arrows on the cover

of Esquire. You know, I mean, like, these are things that we is like, people with common sense can expect. And attacking it for that little point is just, you know, is deliberately. missing the forest for the trees. It underscored me how complicated immigration policy is. So the image of this girl has been like the face of an $18 million fundraiser. Yeah. You've seen, I'm sure, on Facebook, I know I have, but reuniting children with their families. Yeah. You know, we remember we had that meme or thing about separating children that

went around the liberal blogosphere was retweeted by a billion liberal celebrities. Yeah, they had turned out to be like false, you know, about how children are being separated or whatever. I mean, this is one of these issues that's really, really complicated. And the, To me, the stark black and white morality is not complicated, but the details are, which goes back to my earlier point about this stuff. A few scenes before we go from the Trump White House. There was this, what do you call this, a rally, a speech that Trump gave with the victims of illegal immigration. Oh, yes. Where he had signed all the people's pictures of their dead relatives.

Yeah. Later, his social media guy, Dan Skavino, came out and said that all of the people. the families had requested that Trump autograph the photos, all of them. Do you really think that's true? There was also Melania's jacket when she went down to tour the facility in McAllen, Texas, which said, I really don't care, do you letter you? Which was, why did that become such a thing, do you think? Oh, man, there is so much here.

There is a deep, there seems to me there's a deep desire. amongst, you know, the liberal half of the internet to, to see Melania as a, as a hostage of some sort and to read all of her facial expressions and gestures towards President Trump and now the clothes that she wears as like a cry for help or her message to the outside. So I think that's a big part of it. But at the same time, it was perceived to be a statement on behalf of the administration about the, their lack of interest in the, in the immigration issue, or at least in the human side of the immigration issue. Yeah, or the noise around it or something. Sure.

I don't know what. I mean, Trump tried to explain via Twitter that it was a commentary on fake news, like everything else. That was clearly damage control. But yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that that's a little bit just noise, you know, in the sense that it was, that, you know, Melania is a very interesting figure in our in modern politics isn't even the right words. Popular the popular imagination. And I think a lot of you can kind of use her as a cipher to sort of read into read whatever

you want into what's going on in the administration. And this is an example of that. Now, all that said, there was a really interesting Washington Post piece about how a mistake or whatever, a situation like this happens. And I mean, that's worth reading just just as like a really low key sort of, you know, TikTok, you know, I mean, it was like she's got a much smaller staff than most people. She's, she's, um, doesn't go through the normal sort of pomp and circumstance of selecting outfits and the way that previous first ladies have and that she, you know, she's much more

sort of defined when she makes a decision and that, you know, I mean, and this is all second and third hand stuff. Just kind of really interesting look into like what that, you know, wing of the White House is like. Um, it throughout the years and currently, um, but, but all in all, I think it's, it's sort of, it's a non-issue that I mean it's such an arresting visual that it's not like

it shouldn't have been like I don't blame anyone for running with this story of we're talking about this or tweeting about it but we will never know the substance there and it's so beside the point of what's really going on we can skip over for the time being Trump's use of the words invade and infest to describe immigration

Mike Huckabee's extremely racist tweet I just wanted before we close this segment we talk about the whole notion of civility, which we're now, like, this is iteration 9.0 of, you know, should liberals be civil, right? Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Saturday goes to this restaurant at the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia. She's just politely asked to leave by the owner. You could just turn on, you go on Twitter now and it's Mark Cuban praises Red Hen for kicking out Sarah Sanders. Like, okay, thank you.

Yeah. I definitely needed to hear what he had to say about that. That was a TMZ video. Right. But I think it cuts to a couple of questions, right? We have gone, only liberals would worry this much about tactics, right, and civility and things like that. I don't hear a common conversation on the right. It's like, well, should we have been civil about Obama? You know, should it just, I just don't remember it to this extent anyway. It's a couple of things. One, one is the how do you fight the bully question, right? You fight the bully acting like the bully? Or do you, you know, do the Michelle Obama when they go low, we go high business. And the other one is, I think, even more interesting question to me because we actually probably don't know the answer to number one, which is where do you draw the line about what counts as political opinions or actions that deserve to get you chucked out of polite society? Josh Chaffetz, who's a Cornell law professor and also a writer, he writes this,

has his tweet today, he says, I take it that for nearly everyone, certain political views are sufficiently abhorrent, that they should disqualify those who hold them, and especially those in a position to enact them from being received in polite society. Like everyone, he's saying is that that line exists for everyone, right? It's not just Democrats right now at the red hen in Virginia, right? Sure. That there is something people will say and do that you'll be like, oh, that's it. Time I'm out. You know, you're just, you're not, this is, this isn't just a political disagreement or something I find terrible. This is just find something like, nope, you don't get to eat in the restaurant anymore. And that that's totally natural and that everybody in the world has a

line like that. Sure. We're civility. And that this person just happens. like, well, you know, a lot of really racist and racially charged rhetoric about immigration, I'm out. Well, I mean, I think, I mean, and the owner of the restaurant, Stephanie Wilkinson, I mean, the story that, the first story that I read about it, I believe that it was her staff that basically was like, we're not going to do this. And she, you know, agreed with them. But I'm sure it was motivated by, you know, morale and everything else to go through with it.

I mean, it was still very brave, regardless of. whether or not you agree with it for going, you know, for having to say that to face to face. But yeah, I mean, it's a, it's, I think that just like with, you know, Trump reversing course on it. I think that the entire administration was caught off guard by the poignancy of this issue. And we saw Sarah Sanders, we talked about it last week, or she didn't want to do the press briefing about it when this, when this story started coming up. She knew where the big deal this was. She just returned to the podium today for first time in seven days. No briefings for six, six, seven days.

And listen, I don't, I mean, obviously this sort of thing makes me uncomfortable. I mean, it makes, or could make one uncomfortable. But, but what you were saying is absolutely right. There is a line for everyone, you know? Yeah, we shouldn't just pretend it's a great liberals driven to distraction by Trump. Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, and if we're talking, if we're talking, you know, sides of the political spectrum, it has been interesting to see the more institutional side of the, of the,

of the conservative faction defend, be forced into the corner of defending the red hens ability to turn her down because they've just spent all this like political ammunition.

Yeah, with bakers. The Fox headline that just came up on a quick Google search was red hen owner had legal right to tell Sarah Sanders to leave, but it's bad for business,

experts say. By the New York Magazine had a compelling brief blog post about how it's actually probably great for business because you only, if like one,

one out of 10 or one out of 20 people becomes like a diehard red hidden supporter out of this in the region. And like you're set. You know, you don't, this isn't, this isn't the grocery store. This is a restaurant that's going to have a very limited audience anyway. That Fox headline is what we call in cooking a fine dice. Yeah, okay. It really is. Perfect reverence.

All right, David, now it's 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. After the aforementioned Corey Lewandowski incident, CNN reported that Lewandowski. Has been dropped by his Speakers Bureau, after which everyone in the world tweeted, womp, womp. This was noticed by BuzzFeeds, Craig Silverman. Do you want to guess what the name of the Speakers Bureau in Washington, D.C. was? Guess an incredibly generic, slightly lofty name of the Speakers Bureau in Washington, D.C. Voices of America? Very close.

Leading authorities, Inc. Secondly, I'm sure, David, you've been paying close. attention to the World Cup. Pause for laughter. I'm not telling you, I'm only reminding you that last Thursday Argentina lost to Croatia three Zip. I'm going to say nil. I'm going to say Zip. Okay. Zips fine by me. To which everyone in the world tweeted, Argentina, more like Argentina. That's A-R-G-H-N-Tina. Also saw tons of Lulgentina, which was actually sort of more funny. That was noticed by my old friend Alex Hurd. And then finally, Donald Trump, have you heard of him, gave a speech to the NFIB.

That's the National Federation of Independent Business Conference. He came out on stage to the strains of Lee Greenwood's God bless the USA. And then David, he did something amazing. He hugged the American flag that was on stage. You saw this. This is real. David is looking at me. I don't know if it counts as an overwork Twitter joke to just cite drill at drill repeatedly.

but everyone went here one of the classics quote another day volunteering at the Betsy Ross Museum everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the flag buddy they won't even let me fuck it that's Matthew Zitland

all right before talking about wodge in the NBA draft David let's take a quick commercial break David there's a huge soccer tournament maybe you heard me just mention it unfortunately the US men's team did not make it but Iceland did Reika vodka is recruiting you

to be an honorary Icelander and cheer for Iceland this summer. Iceland is the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup, but they also take the field in red, white, and blue. It's a perfect match. When you cheer for Iceland, you get to do the Icelandic Viking chant. It's easy. Just follow along with me.

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Rayca vodka, 40% alcohol by volume 80 proof, distilled from grain, copyright 2018, William Grant and Sons, New York, New York. Okay, David, one sporting event, I know we were watching both of us on Thursday. Uh-huh. Was the NBA draft. Yes. It's kind of like the state of the union here at the ringer. Oh, absolutely.

Maybe bigger. Maybe it's like election night. Yeah. It's pretty enormous. Our annual election night. And I think the media story of the draft was Woj. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

Now, everybody knows that during Woj's Yahoo period, the period in which he was working for Yahoo.com, just to be clear. Right. That uppercase Yahoo. I don't know that Woj has ever had like a I don't want anyone to misunderstand. Yeah, no, nobody must understand, please. He reveled in, quote, tipping the picks.

Oh, yeah. By the way, did you ever heard the term tipping the picks before Woj? This is one of those verbs that suddenly everyone was using. Sure. Yeah. It was just a, it was a very clear. It was just a, yeah, a function in search of a word, I guess. I don't know.

It made sense at the time. As soon as someone said tipping it, we all nodded knowingly. Well, it's like when draft rumors swirl. Right. You know, they always swirl. They don't do anything else. Anyway, that was seen as undermining ESPN, which had the rights to broadcast the NBA draft, because he would put them on Twitter a few minutes for the picks,

and then all the surprise would be. Well, now Woj works for ESPN. He sure does. Awful announcing Alex Putterman first reported that Woj now was under the ESPN Omerta. He could, he was not going to tip the picks. Yeah. Right? This was it.

Stephanie Druley, who's an ESPN executive told New York Times is Kevin Draper, it's a business decision that we're not going to take the air out of our broadcast. They should do that before the draft. Guess what? Woj tip the picks anyway. Yes. And he did it in the most amazing comic. style.

Yeah, it was pretty impressive. First of all, I texted you last week, and I was like, if Woj doesn't tip the picks, you should write a piece about it. Like, you should write before the draft. Who's going to do it, if not him? And then right after that, word broke that ESPN, it was not just ESPN, that Yahoo and the New York Times,

and maybe someone else and Turner had come to an agreement that no one would tip the pick. No league partner would tip the picks. Right. which as the art director for the website who was literally like working in real time to construct the graphics for that show was a real downer for me because when I heard that I was like

oh I thought I was going to have a two minute I thought I was going to have a two minute lead time to like make sure all the like the spelling of every name that popped up on screen was correct right you want a little notice yeah and then right as soon as the draft started Shams tip to pit or now I'm using tip to exclusively now Shams alluded to

some picks We said the first two picks were basically like locked in We'll get to the euphemisms by the way For tipping picks in a second And I think Mark Stein also had Some vague insinuation That something was a gun

Was definitely definitely going to happen And at that point Whatever agreement was in place In Woj's mind Was just out the window And not only was he Do you think he did like The Undertaker sit up

Wherever he was At that point? That's the story That's the story that we're telling at the ringer anyway. I don't know if this was his plan all along, but those two, but it seemed like there were some other stuff that came first. And then, but whatever, regardless, he was 100% of pair, prepared for what followed. Of course. I just don't, I don't, I don't know that it was ever, you know, when I saw the stories about, you know, early in the day, I, of course I thought,

okay, that's, that's odd, as you said, like, who's, who is this going to fall to now? Sure. But it was hard to believe that he would just completely check out of this business, this niche, which he created, right? Oh, yeah. So for euphemisms for pick, so what he started doing was he would get on Twitter and he would not say they're going to pick so-and-so. He would use a euphemism.

So he was technically not tipping the pick. Here's some of the ones he used. Are locked on, are tantalized by, are enamored with, are unlikely to resist, has a laser on, are focused on,

has no plans to pass on. My favorite, I think, is when Jared Jackson got taken by Memphis. he put it on Jaron Jackson, he said, Jaron Jackson Jr. has grown comfortable with the prospect of Memphis drafting him. So I'm not telling you who Memphis is drafting. I'm telling you that the guy Memphis is drafting

feels comfortable with Memphis drafting him. Right. That was kind of an amazing workaround, I thought. It was. The one that I took exception to was has no intention of passing on. You just read it out loud. What was the exact line there? Has no plans on passing on.

How is that not the same as just saying they will pick this guy? Of course is the same thing. But of all the other ones, I thought were inventive workarounds. That was just like I pulled out of thesaurus and just put in an antonym. I did like a double negative instead of putting it. That one I took exception to in the artistic sense. In the artistic, yes.

In the literary flowering of woe sense. By the end, by the way, by the end of the first round, he just started saying they were picking them. Sure. He just didn't care anymore. Because if I picked 30, who is paying attention to the NBA draft except people that actually want to. You're not undermining a telecast. No, nobody cares. Our, you know, online broadcast went off at, like, after like, like, pick 26.

So, like, we couldn't even make it through 30. It was just a test pattern on the ringer after that point. But, yeah, Woj at that point, didn't care anymore. It was, it was pretty impressive. We, by the way, had, I think three, do we have three pieces up on, like, within, within a few hours on the ringer.com about it. You wrote one. Craig Gaines, our copy chief wrote one.

Did Mark Titus write one the next day? I mean, there was a lot of reference of this. And that was, I mean, for the people who are listening to this episode of the press box in like 2028, you know, just to see what life was like back, you know, in this era, it is really not overstating it that that was the biggest story coming out of the draft. And I, I, you know, as a as a sports media person, I never cared about this from years past. This was just the most boring thing to me. And, you know, I didn't, I wasn't mad at him or anything like that, but I was just always kind of, yeah, who cares, right? so you're announcing something's going to happen two minutes later.

Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't, it is, it is, it is, it is a low quality woge bomb.

Yeah, and it's not, it's not, it's, and it's, and it's, and it's, and it's,

and it's, because one could, because we assume that most of the time between, a, a scoop, you know,

the, the bomb, the, whatever the tweet is, and when it's announced on TV is technical stage management time. Right. We have to prepare

Adam Silver to go out and say this, we have to confirm that this, you know, we're all in the same page. Right. Or maybe they're waiting another minute just to draw at the broadcast. Yeah. I mean,

that was the whole point of his, you know, insurgency, right? I guess when this is a workplace, like a workplace violation, like when your boss tells you to do something and then you sort of flagrantly

and funnily do it anyway. Yeah. I guess that it weirdly makes me more interested. I don't know why. Absolutely. Even if it's not any different, really. Yeah.

But for some reason it struck me as much funnier. when it was in this capacity. I totally agree. Also, we should point out he did a mock draft right before the draft where,

and I was just very interested like, what is the difference between a well-informed mock draft and tipping a pick? That's a really good question. Is that, is that like,

is there, I mean, I feel like that's like a kind of a philosophy, philosophical question. What is the, what is the difference of like,

right before the draft, I tell you, like, here are the top five picks versus win team number two and team number three. Well, that was probably

workaround number one. right? And then he had to figure it out. He wanted to see how far I could get. One of the really minor thing that I emailed you about that I don't think matters, but bears mentioned is this Travis Schlink, the GM of the Hawks, said that he was about to trade up from 19 to 17. With the bucks, right? With the bucks to make a pick.

But then he found out because of these leaks that the bucks were already locked in on, that the two picks ahead of them, the bucks and whoever's picking 18 were locked in on these players that weren't the guy they wanted. So he didn't have to give up another asset to go up and get it. I find this story really perplexing and sort of hard to believe because either, I mean, it seems like if you were Travis Schlink and you're seeing these reports that you must know that if you are indeed in conversation with the bucks about the pick, then these reports can't be true, even though they bore out to be true? You mean, if you're still on the phone and then you see a woege tweet saying they're going to pick this guy. Yeah. Then why would they have already turned in a card if they're actually trying to trade?

No, it's true. I mean, this is the one way that this makes an actual difference, though, right? Right. And that's why I think, I mean, that's why the story got so much traction because it was basically Schlingk saying, you know, Woj indirectly screwed the bucks out of a second round pick. Right. Because in a normal way, the bucks would bluff and say, I don't know, we might take that guy. Yeah.

Or I don't know if some other team might trade up with this pick and take that guy. Right. And then you kind of psych them out. They, as you say, trade like a ceremonial second round pick or something and you get a little out of the deal. And in fact, they didn't have to try up. They could have just wait until 19. I think you probably could find more, a lot more issues in the cracks of this story than I just did.

But I do, but, you know, I think my initial reaction was that this piece was, or this report was just a huge buzzkill. The next year we might actually not get Woge and his, you know, and Roge's thesaurus, just like just making draft night all the more hilarious because something like this might happen on a larger scale. This will be the rationale for really putting a kibosh on it. At what age did you learn it was Rojays rather than Rodgitz Thesaurus? Because I remember that's a whole kid. I was like, got my Rodgits right here. I don't think, I mean, how young were you when you were carrying around Rogers? I'm guessing you were like five.

Wouldn't it like a kids' thesaurus in elementary school? Absolutely was. By the way, one other note related note, I watched, especially when the Ringer show went to test pattern, I was watching a lot of the Jumps NBA draft show on ESPN2. And that whole show, first of all, they were directly citing Woj, which is quite funny, the Woj tip picks. But it also, that show kind of told me that there's at least a large portion of the population, me included that is kind of post-draft in the sense of we don't need to watch the guy walk across

the stage. The pick came up on the bottom of the screen and it was people I like, Richel Nichols hosting, Brian Winhorst, Sacklo, Franfranch, like, smart people talking about like. And then they were like, hey, let's spend like five minutes talking about Dwight Howard because that happened. Yeah. And we just need to address that, right? and it was a much better way to consume the draft.

It was like a basketball conversation that incidentally involved the draft. I think that was our in-house idea too. I mean, is that it was, we were already, as soon as the picks were announced, and in the case of them, when they're being tipped, even before they're announced, we're already past it, right?

We're this like hyper, this whole, our whole culture just consumes information so quickly and we're always on to the next big idea. And of course the ringer's going to have these like deep, third degree, you know, interrogations of what every pick and every trade means five minutes later. Yeah.

And also that it's like, I think the draft is only, the NBA draft by itself is really not that important after a couple of picks. It's only important if it's contained a larger discussion. So, of course, there needs to be 20 minutes about LeBron, right? Like, that should be talked about when the calves are on the clock. That's way more important than the, like, who the calves are going to pick at the end of the day. Absolutely true. Yeah.

Who cares who the calves are going to take? The idea that that guy's going to be that good. And these are the real handcuffs that are on Wojian and on ESPN in general is that they, and the NBA is that they are wedded to the pomp and circumstance of the draft as an event on its own terms, right? And it makes it really hard for Wojure for any of these reporters to be themselves to do their jobs when you are airing a pageant, you know, and television. And there was a point in time where I like pageant. 1992 NFL draft. I was like, all right, let's here's the stage. Here's boomer, everything.

And now I'm just like, who cares about all this stuff. I don't know who cares. I can't give you any names, but I will tell you, and this is, you know, I've done all the research. When Woj started tipping the picks, it was obviously a big deal on Twitter and ringer slack. And I started, and I looked at those, the first two tweets that he sent out,

I started looking at the mentions, or at the replies. And there were so many replies of people who were telling him to quit spoiling the draft. Way more than he, way more than what you would expect, which is like, you know, the gif of Kool-Aid man coming through. the wall, you know, whatever, like, the Woj is back.

Oh, yeah. There was way more people who were accusing him of spoilers. Spoilers. Like, the anti-spoiler culture is actually a louder contingent on Twitter at this point than, like, you would think the news consumers and just basketball Twitter, you know, weird Twitter heads that are, you know, do it, that are just replying and happy that this is happening. There are people who are like, quit being, quit spoiling, Woj.

Like, how weird is that? I want to create Twitter, too, for the civilians. people and the anti-spoiler people to just live there, just scream at each other all day. It's just all go together over there. Go away. It's fantastic. Before we get off the subject, by the way, virtual high five, because the Mavs

got our guy. That was huge. That was huge. It was actually a happy draft night. All right, David, finally, what was your favorite line from Stephen Roderick's incredible? Amazing mind-blowing profile of Johnny Depp in Rolling Stone.

A couple of personal faves. This came out last week, by the way, for those who haven't read it. One was Depp strolling into the 10,000 square foot rented mansion in London singing, Oh, My Darling, Clementine, which is just, at which point he has just become Jack Sparrow. You know, just saying there's the other one. The other one he was talking about his plan to expedite the capture as Roder Kreitz of Osama bin Laden. You get a bunch of fucking planes, big fucking planes that spray shit, and you drop LSD 25. he says you saturate the fucking place.

Everything single thing will walk out of their cave smiling happy. He also said it's insulting to say I spent $30,000 on wine because it was far more. That was when it was talking about his bills. Yeah. There was a thing where he had launched the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson, who he was friends with and who of course played a movie into space. He says, by the way, it was not $3 million to shoot Hunter into space. It was $5 million. This is ostensibly a piece about Johnny Depp's financial situation, which is a reason.

why Johnny Depp's handler wanted Stephen Roger to come in. It will be memorable as a piece about the state of Johnny Depp, circa 2018, right? A portrait of this guy. Yeah. In sort of, I don't know if it's a late period

stardom because it doesn't seem like he's, it seems like he could just keep making pirate movies. Sure. For the rest of his life. But it was, I'm always amazed to see a celebrity profile like this that actually cuts beyond what is your standard issue celebrity profile.

There's a line in the piece, I think fairly early on, where Roderick says Johnny Depp's attorney and seemingly his chief and maybe only confidant at this point in his life. The line is quote, Walman made it clear that he was doing an in run without the involvement of Robin Baum, Depp's formidable publicist of many years. Now, it was nice of Roderick to tell us this, but it was unnecessary, I think, for him to tell us this because none of the things that you mentioned at the top of this segment would have made it. I mean, most of them would probably have not made it through the filter of a high-powered publicist, right? And that's exactly why this profile is so great and so cutting, as you said, and so, I mean, actually touching in a lot of ways, affecting. Totally touching to me. The fact, there was so much laid bare. Just really, I mean, it's, you as someone who's written profiles must have experienced this a whole lot, but the LSD and Osama bin Laden thing was sort of a perfect example of this is.

the subject is telling me the subject would be happy if this anecdote made it into the piece. Yes. Would not be telling it otherwise. Certainly not in this, in this way that he was telling it.

But it's not in his best interest for this to be in the piece. And we've, we so rarely have, you know, if the Rock said the exact same thing in an Esquire interview, it would probably find a way, like to be,

It would make its way out of the piece before the magazine hit stands. Yes, I mean, some magical process, right? Yeah. No offense to Esquire in particular, but they're, you know. Now, I don't know in the field of sports media that LSD and Osama bin Laden come up all that much. I don't remember Joe Buck talking a lot about LSD when we were at his house, which was slightly different than the Hong Kong mansion of Johnny Depp. No, but I just, I'm glad you mentioned the rock thing because there is this kind of celebrity profile that we just, you know, sort of dine on as a matter of course, right? celebrity grants some sort of limited access. The writer, and I find nowadays the writer really,

instead of going through the motions like they did in sort of late period vanity fair and all that stuff, there are some youngish writers who are like, I'm going to write the hell out of this thing, right? I've got like 15 minutes, but I'm going to just spin a writerly, you know, aria out of this 15 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever it is. And what amazes me is those have been accepted into the Long Reeds Hall of Fame, we've decided that those are like great celebrity, you know, great long form pieces. And they're not really. They're just, I read them and I'm always like, this is kind of a little confection that could have been much worse, given the genre, but was actually just kind of a bunch of empty calories. And then you read something like this,

and you're like, oh, wow. Yeah. Like that was, there's a celebrity profile. That was really, really good. Yeah. In the, in the, in the, in the writing, writing role, we talk about write arounds, right, when you don't get access to the subject or at least not access to the, you know, you might have some interviews, but you kind of have to write around the main subject. That's what most of these profiles are, even though they're not literally write-around,

because the subject is giving them access, as granting them an interview, but it's sort of a write-around to the piece that you really wish you could have written. You know, it's all sort of meta-journalism at this point, and some of them are actually great pieces of writing. Yep. Many of them are.

Oh, yeah. But in the terms of the profile, you're exactly, I mean, I guess the meta- What did I learn from this? No. No. What, what, or just what information did I get about the subject or angle? We were, we were talking about this before and that like, you know, there's a long history of, of celebrity profile writing not being, you know, a direct profile or being, being about the writer, you know, being an exercise in writing. And the famous example is Frank Sinatra has a cold by Gay Talese. It always comes out. I mean, always comes up in these conversations.

But that was revelatory. That was revelatory. You're right. This is, what we're talking about is not Frank Sinatra has a cold. It's like Dwayne Johnson has a press junket. Right? And I'm just going to do everything I can to make this into a piece that people will talk about. Dwayne Johnson has like two sentences he wants to say. And then the rest of the time he'll smile and give you compliments and fake reveal things about himself. Sure. You know. And it's like, and again, I don't know it's always a fault of the writer in those cases because I think like, you know, it's not like celebrity profiles got bad overnight. But the access is much is just, the access everywhere in journalism is probably worse today than it was, you know, almost every sense. So hard. I mean, that's what the entire PR.

They're tightly control. And they're picking, you know, they want to pick a rider in a lot of cases or whatever. Anyway, Roderick, who happens to be a friend of mine, I should disclose, he, he has managed to do a bunch of these from the Lindsay Lohan Paul Schrader movie to even his, you know, normal ones that are able to just cut through the bubble just enough. You know, so you feel like you're having a journalistic look at this person, right? You feel the best sense of a profile, especially that you are, you are somewhere you're not supposed to be or somewhere and a lot of people don't get to go.

And it's not about just enjoying your time with the subject, but actually, you know, squeezing the subject and trying to get some kind of sense of the person, right? Yeah. And, you know, I just, when one of them, and again, it's not to indict the whole genre, but when you read one of those, it's like, oh, wow, that's different.

That's different from what I normally get. Yeah. No, it's true. I mean, it's hard to cut through the noise, like you said. And you get, I mean, a lot of these, every year, every six months, there's some major magazine profile about an actress written by a man that is, I was going to say deem sexist, that is literally sexist, you know, in the way that it is.

But like a lot, but you can see the motivation of like trying to write through this, trying to find some source of personal connection. And if that's your weird infatuation with the subject, you know, then so be it. Yeah, that was like more like 10 years ago, Esquire, though. Yeah. You'd read a solid of your profile, a bunch of a female actress or, whoa. Yeah. It's kind of before like Twitter media criticism truly picked up, but everybody would be like, yikes.

It still happens. But yeah, that was a whole, that was a whole, you know, subgenre of like Cameron Diaz. I think Cameron Diaz has a crush on me as the first line of your profile or whatever. Yeah, yeah. But, but yeah, I mean, it's really, it's really tough. What's really stunning about this, about this Johnny Depp piece is. is depth is an easy word to throw around but that it clearly starts off as one piece

and like every great piece of journalism follows its own you know follows the trail down the rabbit hole and comes out this like deeper just like incredibly interesting you know just by following the story of his financial insolvency all these you know by following the story that his attorney and that Johnny Depp wanted him to tell

He found his way through to this like very deep, very, um, informative, very, uh, I mean, just intriguing piece that, that speaks to not just Johnny Depp, but sort of all of Hollywood. And decadent celebrity. Decadent celebrity. Decadent celebrity. I mean, they keep referencing, like you said, all these like 70s icons. Marlon Brando keeps coming up throughout the whole thing, but who was friends with them. Yeah.

I mean, and it's, there's just, there's just so much there. Um, you know, this isn't, this is such a small thing, but it's not, it's not, it's not infrequent that you read a profile and you and you kind of and the the kicker is just you know perfect because that's what we writers and editors pride ourselves on is starting and ending these pieces so well but it's rare when you feel when you read one where the kicker is uh takes your breath away and it really feels like the story earned it you know and this one was i mean this is just a great just a just a simple little simple little moment that just i think this is the it was just a really really strong piece. I found what I believe is the

Nadeer of celebrity profiles. This is April 2007. The headline in Esquire, thank you Lord Hillary Swank is single again. Wow. It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. All right. Our non-terrible producer is Jim Cunningham. Thanks to Craig Gaines for his editorial guidance about the Tyson Zone.

We'll be back next week with more hot takes on the media. You get a bunch of fucking planes, big fucking planes that spray shit and you drop LSD 25 saturate the fucking place. Everything. A single thing will walk out of their cave, smiling happy. Virtual high five.

Oh yeah.