The Press Box - Trump's Tour of Europe, a Kinder NBA, and Sacha Baron Cohen Returns | The Press Box (Ep. 500)

Episode Date: July 17, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker link up to look at Donald Trump taking his "fake news" vendetta overseas (03:00), the positive vibes in the NBA media (22:00), and Sacha Baron Cohen's trolling in 'Who Is America?' (39:00). 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

David, as we record this podcast, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin just held an incredibly awkward joint press conference. What I want to know is, who else would you like to see hold an incredibly awkward joint press conference with Donald Trump? I mean, I could watch Donald Trump and Putin all day long. That should just be a recurring product. But I don't know. I think that you've got to pick. need some programming, right? So this is this can work. The problem with

Putin though is that he seems sort of very satisfied by the whole thing. And I think that if I was going to make a pick, it would be somebody who was just, you know, started off hopefully, but just, you know, immediately went off the rails. And you got to watch them react to

Donald Trump. I don't know. I mean, it would be great if I'm sure, gosh, I'm sure like Ivanka Trump would be fun. Melania would be fun. Oh, yeah. It would be great if Maggie Haberman had to have a press conference with Trump every time that she got out of an interview with him or something and just to watch his discussion of every interview before it made it to press. That just watching her face would be magical, I think. Yeah, I think the sweet spot, though, is it's got to be a Trump ally, right?

It's got to be somebody who feels they are on the same page with Donald Trump, but doesn't know what Donald Trump is going to say and how he's going to express that. So I guess the only idea I had was like Roger Goodell, right, who has seen me. extended an olive branch to Trump, but just doesn't know what Trump is going to say. Anyway, we will, we'll see if we can nail that down for MSNBC's new eight to nine block. And in the meantime, we are your cable news programmers. This is the press box on the Ringer podcast network.

The Pressbox is the media podcast where you're not allowed to write a think piece about Sasha Baron Cohen. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer and class your ringer syllabus today. Kevin O'Connor. Don't call him KOC unless you know. Noem wrote about Jabari Parker signing with the Bulls for your World Cup come down. Please read Australia's very own Daniel Harris on the greatest World Cup match ever played. And finally, Miles Surrey on how the rock collapsed to the box office this weekend.

Insert your burning, building puns here. But, David, I've got three topics for you today first. As Donald Trump continues his scenery-chewing tour of Europe, we will talk about Trump, John Roberts, Jim Acosta, fake news, and all that went into last week's imbrilyo. When should journalists have each other's backs? Second, we'll talk about what we'll call NBA journalism's era of good feelings. Everybody's nice. Why is everybody nice?

And finally, we talk about the aforementioned Sasha Baron Cohen. Is America all good on trolling, or is this the troll we desperately need? Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But shall we start with Donald Trump, who seems to be in the news this week? You might have said it. He would travel to the UK last week to talk about Brexit. it? No, the defeated English soccer team. No. David, he wanted to talk about fake news. And here is Trump's exchange while holding a press conference alongside PM Theresa May with CNN's Jim

Acosta. John Roberts. Go ahead, John. No, no. John Roberts, go ahead. CNN's fake news. I don't take questions. I don't take questions from CNN. CNN is fake news. I don't take questions from CNN. John Roberts of Fox. Let's go to a real network. Well, we're a real network too, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. So this is one of those press quagbiers, I think, that's maybe a little more of a quagbire even than people think.

Everybody on Twitter says, why doesn't John Roberts, it was the second speaker there, right, who works for Fox, Trump's favorite network, why doesn't he just say, look, you call CNN fake news, I'm going to say something about that, right? or I'm going to even refuse to take the mic. Is that our preferred course of action in a case like this? I mean, I think to me it was kind of stunning how quickly public opinion coalesced around that point of view. I think that's obviously an ideal. Yeah, but it sort of reminded me a little bit of Trump being mad that Sarah Huckabee-Sanders didn't walk out of the White House Correspondent Center. I mean, there's an ideal version of what happens, and then there's what happens, you know, when you're actually put on the spot without, you know, you know, without a lot of time to think and with, you know, potentially your career on the line.

So, yeah, I mean, it would have been great if John Roberts had said something. You should have said something, obviously. I can't say I was entirely shocked that, you know, having spent so much time around the president that someone, I mean, that someone would just let that go. It seems sort of par for the course. I obviously think that precious reporters should have each other's backs, especially in cases like this when you have a extremely a president's extremely antagonistic against the press, right? But I guess my, here's my devil's advocate case.

Is it more, do you say, I don't want the mic, either Jim gets to ask a question or that's it? Or is there some value in you saying, well, this sucks, this is a shitty state of affairs. But you know what? I need to ask the president an important question and there's whatever value I get out

of answering the question. I just don't, I just think like, I don't know, I like, I think there's a lot of important things we can do with the press and I think there's also this kind of performative aspect that we would like reporters to do, right? Right. But there was this whole wormhole opened up partly by Jake Tapper of CNN where he says he stood up for Fox correspondents when the Obama White House tried to ice them out in 2009, right? Right.

He said he stood up and said to Robert Gibbs in a press conference, can you explain why it's appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one? Which is, which was interesting. And, you know, his point, of course, was that Fox. didn't return the favor. But it was funny when I was looking at that 2009 stuff, what the Obama White House would do is they would put out, say, you know, a Obama on all the Sunday shows,

but they would exclude Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, right? They'd just be like, okay, and Chris Wallace being one of the guys they probably thought they could deal with right at that network. I'd say, no, no, no, you get punished for your whole network's antagonism and craziness and nuttiness toward Obama, right? But it's like in that case, should Chuck Todd at all have said, okay, if we find out this is happening, we're not going to take an interview with the president of the United States on our program? Or are they making a situational decision saying this is terrible? We can protest against this at some point, but we need to interview the president of the United States.

I don't know. Like I said, maybe I'm just being doubled up. It's the last one. It's the last one. The most ideological, I mean, the most ideological person, and this is obviously totally conjection. But I'm going to say with, with, you know, I feel positive that the most, you know, ideologically pure person at NBC news in that situation would say, we will give the, we will give the White House a stern talking to. We will, you know, negotiate with other things. We will, we will,

you know, we will, we will, we will, we will make this point to them very clearly as soon as we get this interview on tape. As soon as we get our turn with President Obama, we will express our dismay as loudly as possible. We will send a press release. Yeah. that does feel like the TV news ethos about it all. The funny, so let's talk a little bit about how ridiculously artificial the Trump war on CNN, especially in this case, using this case as a microcosm, right? Trump, ices out Acosta at the press conference and says, I don't take questions from CNN, they're fake news, right?

It turns out, according to Brian Stelter, that Trump had taken a question from CNN's Jeremy Diamond the day before, right? and when Trump is leaving, I can't remember if it was that day or the next day, Acosta shouted a question saying, well, you ask Putin to stay out of the U.S. elections. Trump turned and answered yes, setting up, talking about, of course, Monday's summit with Putin. So he is answering questions from CNN. He is even answering questions from the guy he's icing in the press conference, right? But he's then doing it. it and then they turn around the way meaning the day meaning the trump white house and withhold john bolton

from cnn sunday show and the tweet from sarah hookabee sanders is actually a CNN reporter disrespected the president and p.m.a during their press conferences had rewarding bad behavior we decided to reprioritize the tv appearances for administration officials so they had promised bolton at the last minute they withdrew bolton from the appearance oh man it is very strange is it too overly simplistic to guess that like Trump was just trying to impress his new friend up there on the podium next to or is he trying to you know he's in a new territory I mean there's all this talk about the Putin I mean this is a you know later he was he was up there next to Putin today as we record this and and he was so sort of buddy buddy with Putin that people were you know like

John Brennan called him treasonous you know everybody everybody McCain's out there saying like this is the worst thing he's ever seen I mean maybe Trump's just you know Trump's gets around a new set of people and he's just like, maybe it'll look cool if I like, you know, if I just call out a reporter and, uh, and refuse to answer a question and drop my fake news catchphrase and that'll really show everybody that'll, you know, establish my dominance or, or please the people around me. It'll be funny. I don't know. It doesn't make, I mean, there's obviously not a lot of logic to it. I think there's, you're more right than you think that. Maggie Haberman has talked about on Twitter how

Trump's ideas just to say whatever will get him through the next 10 minutes. And it doesn't matter what he says. It's just like, okay. it's like the ultimate situational ethics. I just need to get through the next 10 months. If it's an outright lie, that's fine. If it's crushing CNN, that's fine. By the way, when you're talking about impressing his new friend, his new friend is the PM that he had crushed in a son interview,

interview with the Murdoch, Tabloid, the son the day before. And then called it fake news when it was brought up that he had criticized the British, and that the interview was not only, printed in the paper, but the audio was online, right? So there was no ambiguity about what he was saying. He complained that she hadn't taken his advice on Brexit

and everything. And he said, Boris Johnson, one of her rivals would make a good prime minister, etc. Right. So that was just, I mean, again, maybe it's just dumb to even try to find the through line through all this stuff because it's just, you know, just chasing

our tails around. I feel we have this segment every week. It's like, what could Trump mean by this? It's like, well, maybe he doesn't mean anything at all. Yeah. For me, for me, the Sun interview is actually one of the least. I mean, to me, if you define fake news narrowly, not as like something that's been misreported or made up, but just something that like I may have said, but is factually incorrect.

That's not my administration's opinion. That's actually like the, like, I think the most reasonable definition of fake news. You know, like, yeah, okay. That might like, I'm not, I'm not, if, you know, he's obviously not saying, he obviously is denying it. But if you were to say that just like, I'm not denying that exists, but that's not actually the position of this administration. That, I mean, that's, that's fine by me. You know, it's a lot better than some of the other fake news examples. Yeah, it's amazing that we're willing to settle for that edition. I think James Pony Wazick, TV critic at the times,

tweeted during that. He says, like, basically what fake news means now is you can ignore this. Yeah. For, you know, fans of mine, this damning thing has been printed or even has been said directly by me, but you can just ignore it. that I'm giving you permission to, you don't even have to pretend it doesn't exist. It's just kind of like, eh, don't worry about it. Do we see these various performances across the world

by a president who famously just didn't want to leave home? I mean, didn't want to leave Trump Tower to come to the White House and they never wanted to leave the White House to go on a trip? Is this a positive move that he's, that he's gallivanting around the world now? I mean, do we like this iteration of President Trump? I think in media terms that it goes back to, to the 10 minute rule, you know? In this case, it may be the one day rule, right?

I mean, there was like, what are the great overworked Twitter jokes of this last weekend was remember five days ago when we were announcing a new Supreme Court justice who was going to change the relationship, you know, was going to change America as we know it? And that had all been erased day by day during this trip. I mean, why Trump is talking to Putin is probably another, you know, 19 hour podcast that we could do. But I think there is a sense. I mean, he's also talking to the press a lot. He talked to the son. He talked to Pierce Morgan on this trip. He has two interviews with CBS as Jeff Glore. One, he's already given it one he's going to give after the Putin summit. He's done a lot of

press conferences, including that bizarre one he just gave where he's taking questions. So I think some of it is, it's not just how I change the subject, which is, you know, a basic question of every administration. It's how do I just get more attention, right? How do I just? stir things up in this kind of crazy way. Sure. Sure. I think that's right. I think, yeah, I mean, we had the Supreme Court, like you said, the Supreme Court nomination that was so, so recently. I mean, I know that he met with Putin today and the meeting, you know, the press conference afterwards spurred a lot of outrage, but lost in that was there was seemingly was the initial outrage of him meeting one on one with Putin for 90 minutes or two hours, however long it was.

It all just sort of, it all sort of just falls by the wayside. You know, I mean, and again, maybe this is, you know, we talked about Scott Pruitt last week. And maybe on some level, I'm sure this is, you know, this is building up to, you know, whether it's the next election or, or whatever else. I mean, for anyone who's, who's, you know, looking at this from an unbiased point of view or maybe a particular bias that, you know, it's, this, this is compounding. But it does all just seem to dissipate. I mean, it's, it's kind of amazing. Yeah. A couple of the amazing tweets, too, what he talked about our relationship. This is tweeting from foreign soil. You were asking about that

whole idea. Our relationship with Russia has never, all caps, been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now the rigged witch hunt, which was pretty astounding, right? Going to Twitter and blaming when he talks about the

U.S. Russian relations blaming the United States, right? A lot of people today saying this is like, it's like Nome Chomsky and Howard Zinn are tweeting from Donald Trump's Twitter account. Somebody said that on Twitter today. Sorry, I don't have credit. But I think in terms of the press, when he's going after that, I'm stealing a tweet here from Hadaskold of CNN,

she says the U.S. President doing this abroad, is like giving authoritarian leaders around the world who put reporters in jail, Vladimir Putin, that's my ad, who try to quash a free press, a green light. And I think that is what is most symbolically about this, right? President goes abroad. We sort of take it for granted that he's going to be a beacon of U.S. values in whatever way, whatever way. And, you know, free press, you know, is, it's gone, right? Day one of the trip.

We're all good. Ethically, I totally agree with that point of view. Functionally, I can kind of sympathize with the president a little bit here. Every time I travel for work, it's like I touch down another city and suddenly I just like, oh, I just realize I have time to tweet and to like text friends I haven't texted in a while. I don't know. I just a couple, just just the regular like, oh, I got to do this thing pressure of day to day work and, and social life is just out to window and suddenly, you know, Twitter, Twitter beckons. I can understand. Before we move on, I say, you know, as absolutely mind-blowingly bonkers as it is that Trump and Putin met one-on-one today, again, today as we record this, you know, I might have a little sympathy there too. I think

if we had all of our ringer co-workers sitting in a circle around us as we were recording this podcast every week, it would probably be a much less fun podcast. So anyway, moving on. Yeah, well, wait until we do the public version of this, like some of the other pods of Dunning. You'll get your wish. 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. Let's start

with a time machine overworked Twitter joke, David. Trump's tour of Europe led a woman named Tanya Tar to go back to a Trump tweet from 2016 when he arrived in Scotland. Remember this? To celebrate the passage of Brexit? Remember that was right after? Yeah. Trump

tweeted, place is going wild over the vote. They took their country, back, just like we will take America back. No games. The important thing to know here is that Scotland actually rejected Brexit, right? And what TAR did was collect Trump insults from some extremely Scottish people. Are you ready? This is a collection of Scottish overworked Twitter jokes. First one, quote, Scotland hates both Brexit and you, you mangled apricot hellbeast.

Scotland voted Remain, you weapons grade. plum. A lot of stone fruit humor there in Scotland. Another Twitter called him a clueless numpty. And still another one said, they voted remain, you spoon. Which I, Merriam Webster tells us that 19th century British slang spoon meant simpleton. Who knew? Elsewhere this week, David, I know you've been following the case of one, Papa John. Oh, yeah.

John Schnatter resigned from his seat as chairman of the board of Papa John's International. According to Forbes's Noah Kirsch, Schnatter used the N-word and made other offensive remarks on a conference call that was devoted to improving Papa John's PR. This is basically the Diversity Day episode of the office come to light. We need to the Cheshay Serrato Bat Seigil. Here we go, baby. Anyway, in the wake of that shit show, it was surprisingly common to tweet, quote, waiting for the white smoke to rise from the pizza oven indicating the selection of a new Papa John.

That's thanks to David Mulhern and the honorable mention to anyone who tweeted a version of, quote, Papa John is going to become Trump's ambassador to Italy. That's via Jack Sinclair. All right, David, before we talk about the NBA and the era of good feelings, let's take a quick commercial break. Hey, let's talk about Ring or podcast quickly. Did you know Larry Wilmore has a podcast called Black on the Air?

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The rewatchables, the recapbles, yeah. That's it. Check it out at the Ringer podcast. Subscribe to them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Next up, David, something I'd like to call NBA Journalism's era of good feelings. There are people, and here is the to be sure paragraph, right? There are people on the NBA beat who have Bill Cart rights elbows, right? Zach Lowe, a lot of people at ESPN, Wode, Wicked Dave a lot.

Here's my point. it feels like NBA coverage circa 2018 is nice, right? And that it's built in a way to celebrate the league and celebrate the game of basketball in a way NFL coverage isn't. I've been thinking about writing about this. Can we talk this out? Can we have a story meeting right here? Here are a couple of reasons jump in any time that I think NBA cut writing has this quality of niceness that the other sports don't. Number one, I think we all forget how lowly the basketball beat was a couple of years ago, right?

It was number three among major sports. Yeah. There weren't a lot of people that raised their hands that said, I want the basketball beat. I think when you have an underdog league, the default story to write is, man, the NBA is blowing up, right? Here we go. This is incredible. This league is climbing, right? So we've talked about that before on this podcast.

I think that that's just one of those things is that is the storyline, as surely as the storyline of baseball is that it's fading and the NFL is fading too. Okay. Number two, when you have that lowly number three sport, I also think it's easier to enter the beat. There's a lower barrier to entry, as we say, right? And become a big voice in basketball writing than it would be the NFL. And I think that actually encourages a different kind of journalist to come in, right?

Yeah. So I've met a lot of NBA writers. I'm sure you have two. This is I got into this because I love basketball. Yeah. Not because I love writing, not because I love journalism, but I love basketball. right? And am I nuts or does that just sort of, it mean, not everybody, but fundamentally kind of change the talent pool of people that are writing about it? Sure, we're a long way away from, you know,

the days where you just, we're lucky to get an internship at a sports desk and work your way up through like, you know, high school softball, you know, just like jumping up like minor degrees from one sport to the next until like, you know, someone says, we'll let you cover car racing. occasional football weekends or something like that. You know, I mean, but yeah, to be able to get in, so many of these, so many of the basketball writers now just sort of wrote their own ticket, you know, they started, they started blogging about it and made a career out of it. And this is no defense of much of the sports internet economy, but you can basically start blogging on a reputable, reputable platform and not get paid,

but you got to, you know, the barrier for entry is relatively low. And if you're good, you work your way up as, as someone who loves basketball, not just someone who's grinding along on this ideal of being a, you know, sports writer vaguely defined. Right. And that's true in all sports, right? Everywhere. Yeah. But I just think like it's basketball had so many fewer people and the power structure was so much looser than it was in other sports that if you were that basketball loving blogging guy, you could get in there easier, right? And again, and I'm not one of those people who says, you know, either you're a capital J journalist or you're somebody who comes at it from that point of view.

I actually don't, you know, what matters is, are you good? Right? That's what I think. But I just think the talent pool is probably skewed a little differently in basketball than it is in other sports. Another thing we talked about on this podcast, in fact, talked about last week, is how NBA players in 2018 have this amazing power and agency they didn't have before, aka LeBron.

This is a good thing. I think we both agree, right? here's the other side of it. When the player rather than the team is calling the shots, that also has an effect on journalism. And you know what happens? Agents get involved, right? And the NBA profile becomes as brokered an act of journalism as a Hollywood profile once was, right? Whenever I talk to people who write these things for magazines, they say, oh, yeah, you had to go through CAA,

had to go through all these agencies and, you know, deal with them. these are agents who wanted to pick the writer, you know, if maybe the publication said, this guy's going to cover it, oh, could we get this other person to cover it? Who they had a relationship with, right? And when you, I just feel when you, when profile writing starts to go through agents,

rather than teams or other institutions, right? It becomes, it just becomes different, right? It becomes like, it's like, it's all the complaints we had about Hollywood profiles of a different era. we could now use about a lot of basketball profiles. Yeah, but I think that there's, I agree with that for sure. I think closer to the sort of concept of niceness is, you know, those kind of profiles can get written and they still get a pass on basketball Twitter, right? I mean, something that's, like, every writer, every right, but that's sort of the, that's the part of the niceness that sort of intrigues me more.

I mean, listen, if you get access to whoever, LeBron James, because he's the most famous player in the world, with a lot of conditions, you'd probably, I mean, unless there's something that's just like ethically, you know, debilitating, you'd go in and hope that you can get something really good working within the rules that you're, that you're confronted with. But yeah, I mean, it's not, but there's not, you know, I think there'd be a lot of other genres and other sports too,

where I think other writers would sort of raise an eyebrow to those sorts of pieces, and you don't see that as much. Basketball Twitter or basketball media in general, like, you're right, Is it is a sort of more a warmer place than that? Yeah, I think if looking for like, how would that be received, maybe a Tom Brady profile or something like that, just like this very exclusive cut of NFL players, because those pieces are so rare,

and those pieces that are also almost certainly brokered by agents and other forces other than like, you know, dear Green Bay Packers, I want to write about so-and-so, right? Yeah. So, you know, you'll have, I think, And I think, you know, if a Tom Brady profile that wasn't just an ad for his Uggboots or something would probably get a pretty decent hearing on Twitter

because people would just be curious to what he has to say. But you're totally right. That applies to a huge amount of NBA journalists, right? It's just like, I want to understand this guy. I want to know about this guy. And I'm not terribly worried, you know, if you're asking him hard questions or, you know, have some notes in there where you're pushing him into a kind of a weird place. Yeah, there's very few players, I think, about whom the average fan or even the average journalist has a particularly pointed or, you know, arch opinion opinion.

You know, so you do just sort of want to spend some time with it. And I think that gets to a lot of what you're saying at its core, you know, pro basketball is a very, is a much more human sport than the other sports. You know, we identify with these players as real people. There's no, there's no helmets. There's no long sleeves. There's the camera. are zoomed in on their faces and we get to see every moment of their agony and ecstasy and in every game and I think in some ways that sort of trickles down to the way that it you know into the into the coverage that it gets it's a very uh the the spirits are you know it's it's it's a good spirited field of journalism yeah but it is it's still I mean I was I was tickled this this uh in you know in free agency that we're we're still in obviously but the beginning of free agency there was like you know Paul George re signed with the thunder and the story started coming out, like, maybe this just has to do with the fact that he formed a real sincere friendship

with Russell Westbrook. You know, like, that's the story there. You know, there's, it's, it's, it's this friendly thing. And like, who was it? Oh, like, Aaron Baines re-signed with, with Boston for less than, you know, we thought his market value was. And he was like, it's where I wanted to be. And then a Boston reporter came out and he was just like, hey, don't discount the fact that, like, his family and Gordon Haywood's family and a co-and-other family have just, like, they're, like, all best friends. And they're raising their children together, you know? It's very, like, heartwarming story is that you don't hear about that frequently. And I think that there's just some of that.

Now there's also more of a, you know, there's more craven aspect to it all, which is basketball because of how open and how much like interaction and everything there is, it's, you know, it's hard to imagine that being a jerk online would do anything but hurt your career trajectory. You know, I mean, everybody's different people from different outlets are guesting on each other's podcasts, right? I mean, this is, and then of course there's the, these are all places that you might work someday full stop. It's just much more collegial as just a matter of format, you know, as a matter of structure. Yeah.

Imagine how like just shocking it would be if our old friend Zach Lowe was just like, yeah, I was going to have Brian Winhorst on this week, but fuck that guy. You know, I mean, like, it's just the idea of being a jerk in basketball journalism just seems like so crazy. When was that, when was our last great NBA writer fight? that was not caused by the ringer. Oh, I know that I know that there's many of them. I mean, I know, I know that there's, there's a lot of subtle stuff and you always hear, you know, I mean, you know, there's, there was a lot of stuff when, when ESPN hired Woge that a lot of like, you know, rumors are behind the scenes, machinations and whatnot.

That was, but that was, but that was different. That was about jobs, you know, that was. Yeah, I know, but yeah, I mean, for some, like, I don't, I mean, do we have to go back to like Peter Vessy? What was a lot? I can't imagine the last time that someone was just like, I'm sure the New York tabloids have been in it more recently than that, but, but. just people airing their,

erring their, their, grievances with other writers in public. I can't even remember one, man. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was on Twitter last night and Mike Florio was fighting with somebody.

It's just like, just a matter of course, right? It's just like, no big deal, but I just, for some reason, I can't remember the big, a big stakes NBA one.

So a couple of things I thought you entered, identified there, by the way, the fact that we know basketball players, and I would also just add as the add them to that is the way they've used social media rates to make people feel like they know them, right?

and that probably trickles down into all this coverage as well somewhere. For sure. So here's a couple of other things. Some of those sound like may sound in certain years like I'm blaming the writers, but here's a couple of other things I think that are kind of amazing. They're just kind of interesting in this conversation. One is LeBron James, biggest basketball player in the world, right? He decided maybe after playing in Miami, maybe after winning a few rings,

that he's like, okay, I'm going to cooperate with the press, right? Let us not underestimate the impact. that has, right? People always say, oh, the NBA is such a much more politically and socially conscious league. You know why? Because LeBron James is politically and socially conscious, right? And boy, does that free up a lot, give everybody else a lot of space, right? Yeah. And I think LeBron's saying, I want to play balls. He's done a few last few years. I think KD, second biggest player in the NBA going from OKC to Golden State and suddenly becoming more available. The fact that Steph and Draymond and Clay Thompson play for the press-friendlyest team in the

Golden State, right? I think that is incorporated into all this, because I think people probably, you know, again, not everybody, but a certain group of journalists know those guys on a more intimate level than they would, right?

And that just leads into those guys' feelings and opinions and point of view seeping into the coverage in a way that it wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, I think that's totally true. I think the idea of feelings is important because you were talking about Mike Florio all through the NFL draft process,

there were a lot of these little fights on Twitter that would pop up. And it was, I think there's much more of a, there's more of a premium in other sports on facts, whether it's, you know, the saber metrics in baseball or just like, you know, everything from the draft combine, every, you know, every little stat. And then when team, when we're actually talking about draft rumors leading up to the NFL draft, you know, basketball teams have increasingly large staffs, but it's nothing compared to the scouting, you know, the scouting, the expanded ranks of football management, you know? So you get all these weird, like, beat writers that contradict each other and then feel the need. You know, one guy's like, oh, this team really, really likes

Josh Rosen. And then, like, the other beat writer's just, like, on Twitter, like, you're full of shit, you know? Or like, you've got bad sources. But it's probably just the, probably just the case of, like, two different low-level scouts saying different things, you know, whatever. But, like, it always, they feel the need to defend their turf to such a degree. And maybe in basketball, maybe the reason why we get less of that is because it's just inherently collegial, but maybe it's because all of that work has sort of been set off on, like has been granted to Woge and obviously to Mark Stein and DeShams to a somewhat lesser extent. But the news breaking is a very small piece of the industry now. And all of these other writers are more like they're synthesizers,

you know, or they're their columnists, they're, they're statisticians. They're, they're statisticians. but whatever, but they're not dependent, as dependent on breaking a small story and getting it exactly right for their reputation and for the stakes of their future employment. I think that's totally right. I'm trying to remember Josh Rosen-like argument we've had about an NBA player. And even if it were the same kind of general zone, I think it would just be phrased so differently, right? Yeah.

And I don't think the particular things Rosen was dinged for and that Kevin Clark, the ringer's very own Kevin Clark loves to make fun of. I don't think here's okay let me let me make a point before we get out of the subject that I think is related to that we talked about the decision a couple weeks ago a lot there were the bad

takes about the decision which you remember well where LeBron doesn't have the right to go to Miami LeBron doesn't have the right to have a TV show etc etc. I think LeBron and the decision banished a ton of NBA bad takes those things were out there eight years ago and they are gone now to me

there's almost this thing that the opposition and again like the devil's advocate the counterintuitive take the non-terrible hey hey what about this with lebron just hasn't had time to build itself back up right because so many so many people you know fell off the high dive on lebron and i feel like now like how you know if somebody wanted to make a career out of lebron as a terrible general manager and he cost his team a shot at one or two more titles by being a bad general manager, they could ride that horse all day, right? Yeah.

You know, we hear that. We hear a little bit of that with the Lakers, heard a ton of it with the cast, but I feel like, I don't know. I just feel like there's this, you have this, in every sport, you have this kind of trolley, oppositional force that is right, like, once out of every four times. And I feel like those people all got shamed, and they haven't really come back and kind of figured out a smart way back into the NBA conversation. That may be totally insane, but I sort of feel that at some level.

I think that that's true. You know, it's funny. As you're talking, I'm trying to think of the last person, mentioned Peter Vessie earlier. You know, he's never, he was never shy. I mean, he saw as a newsletter. And it's definitely worth reading just for, you know, just the comedic aspect of the pros.

But I was trying to think of the last time somebody was, was, you know, kind of tooting their own horn. You remember Chris Rumsar took a lot of shit for getting stuff wrong over the years, but it was Chris Sheridan, who was the guy who was the guy who, was like, you know, the first one out there, was that when LeBron went to Miami? Yes. And he was, and he was, you know, there's a little chicken and the egg to it, but he was very,

very, you know, outspoken about, you know, being the guy who broke the story. And that certainly didn't do any favors for his career in the long run. So, I mean, I don't know if that's, I don't, again, chicken in the egg, but like, you know, it's not, you just don't hear people, you know, just making a big noise about themselves that much anymore. and it's a really, it's an incredibly weird world that we live in. All right, David, let's get to our third topic. Sasha Baron Cohen returned Sunday night with a showtime series called Who Is America?

Which is a much better title when you read it in the Allie G voice. I'd first like to associate myself with this tweet from Abe Reesman of New York Magazine, quote, I have foreseen the next few weeks and they are filled with takes about Sasha Baron Cohen. Yes, they are. But here we are, right? And I think the central question that I've seen about him and the show is, is Cohen putting more trolling into an already trolled out universe? Or, number two, is trolling the best way to fight Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich and Sarah Palin, right? Is the troll the sort of enlightened troll the only thing we got now?

Right? That's the question. But I want you to put that on hold for a second because can't we just appreciate the Sasha Barron Cohen experiment just for a second. The people that came forward this week, didn't you love the media ritual of I too have a first person story I would like to share about being duped by Sasha Baron Cohen? I mean, it was amazing, right? That they just at the very base level, having to get out in front of the story about a

Sasha Baron Cohen interview, that that is a thing now, that that was just like a huge going concern for a week in Washington and related speech. that I mean, that was, it's just, just amazing. I mean, and also that all that managed to break just days before the show. I wonder if the producers sort of tipped their hat to went to the first person to see if they could just start that chain reaction. Because when I was reading all those stuff about Sarah Palin and everybody else, I, it didn't occur to me immediately that the show was coming out like the following Sunday. And then when I heard that it was coming out, I was like, did they rush the show? out because of the publicity. It's like, no, that just happened organically, I guess? I don't know.

It was just really, really amazing. I mean, it's probably that, that, all of those, you know, preemptive reactions are going to end up being better than the show, but even so, it was, it was worth it. Yeah, and great for some of these people's careers, right? Like, raise your hand, if you'd heard of Augusta, Georgia-based conservative radio host, Austin Rhodes. Yeah. Not a member of the Dusty Rhodes family, as far as I know, who wrote like a first person peace in the Hollywood reporter. Like, huh? That dude has some juice now.

I love the, also the Ted Cople one. I just really appreciate the approach. Because, again, there were a lot of stuff about James O'Keefe this week and how, you know, you look at Cohen and you look at him and one is sort of a genius and one is just pathetic. But listen to the approach for Ted Cople, who got got got this week. He was approached to be on a show. called tentatively titled Age of Reason. This is from the Hollywood Reporter,

which would feature, quote, conversations with distinguished experts in science and public policy, highlighting the brightest and most reputable minds on today's most important topics. Is that an email Ted Cople is going to answer? Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yes, it is.

Yes. The story goes on. Sometime later, a crew arrived at Cople's home in Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C. among them was a wheelchair-bound man with an oxygen tank hanging off one of the handles, recalls Coppel. So that was

at that point, he began to think something is potentially a little wrong. Here's the anti- here's the anti-Sasha argument. I read this in Vox. Aja Romano, I hope I'm saying that right. I read it from the Washington Post, Hank

Stoever, too, an excellent writer and critic, one of my favorites. It's essentially that that act worked was like a Bush administration thing, right? That there was sort of a more, you know, somehow you were tricking people and doing that. And he is, as Romano writes, 12 years on from Borat, we are so past the point at which we could believe in a single, stable version of reality that Baron Cohen's methods don't feel invigorating or as though they're advancing the conversation around politics or comedy. What do you think about that? How he plays in 2018.

I mean, I think it's a, I guess it's a valid question. But I don't think that, I think that the arguments about style and format seem sort of beside the point. I think I watched the first episode more or less live with some friends and family. And, you know, it felt like, it felt like, you know, important enough that we sit around and watch it on a Sunday night. after dinner, but also, you know, I felt like we were all, like, that the kind of first and third segments got a really good reaction. The middle section in the art gallery just seemed like a misfire. I mean, not that it was, it was certainly entertaining, but all of that is to say that, you know, I mean, it's just my opinion, the same opinion, you know, we shared by,

I think, other people there, but I think it's not, it's going to rise and fall on its, on, on its own merits. I don't think it's like there's there's some philosophical argument that this style is no longer useful as useful as it once was or that we should it's been, you know, we should seat it to the to the right wing or anything like that. I mean, listen, that, you know, if James O'Keefe was doing like legitimately hilarious material, then I think that, you know, he'd be making a lot more of an impression than he, than he has been. Yeah. I find, I find the argument that let's say there's a side of truth and a side of troll, right? Team

truth should just unilaterally disarm and should never resort to prankery, right? To be really weird. Not because I have any sort of greater feelings about it because why don't we get to have fun, right? Why don't we get to, why don't we get

to do this too? Stuber's point was sort of, so I agree with you there, Suber's point was sort of a little bit different where he said he said essentially, he says, whatever shame or embarrassment might have one company to an unflattering appearance in one of whom's more elaborate stunts hardly matters anymore.

We're fresh out of shame in this country right now. You know, essentially saying that even if you, as Trent Lott was, or Dana Roarback for one of these stars of the Kindergarten's sketch, which is about arming young children and preschoolers. Truly one of those amazing comedy bits

I've ever seen, right? Yeah. Okay. Heartbreaking for you. Hilarious. No, no. No, no. Hilarious. Yes. Hilarious and heartbreaking. Yeah. in a way, like that would have just been an absolute career sinker 10 years ago. And that maybe now, and I think, I don't know if I agree with where he goes with this, but I do think the point is true now that now does anybody care?

I mean, does Trent Lott suffer anything but five minutes of embarrassment, right, for being a complete, such a complete, ridiculous hack that he was get on there and talk about arming preschoolers? Or have we just moved as immediate thing? thing where we're just so weird and, you know, performative that we just don't actually care about that anymore. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I didn't, you know, I haven't seen any resignations come out today. So I think that the answer to that is maybe right there in front of us. What would Trent Lott resign from from being a lobbyist? It's certainly a lot easier

in 2018 to kind of retreat into your core constituency and not apologize. And, uh, And, you know, it's going to keep your head down to come through it. I think that's, that's definitely true. It's an interesting question. I, I, you know, maybe my ideals are outdated. But I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I'd like to think that, on some level, this is, for, for, for some people, this is the most effective way of, of, of changing minds, you know, um, do we think that? I mean, do we think any, I mean, do we think any, anybody's mind is changed by this? Or that we just,

some of us just laugh and have a great time and then go away. I mean, I think exposure is the real thing. I mean, I think it's, I would totally buy into the, if you wanted to argue that this is dumb because no, nobody will,

nobody on the right, the conservative side of the spectrum will literally ever see it that I, I think I'd be more, I mean, more willing to buy into that. But, but, but, you know,

I mean, that, I mean, Dana Roherbacker is my congressman in California and nothing but respect for my congressman. But he is so post-truth, you know, like he is, he is more Russia-e than Trump, you know, and all this stuff that I just don't, I don't know that, you know, in his particular case, he was one of the stars of the kindergarten's thing that it would actually affect him at all.

I really don't, you know, and I think somebody like Trent Hott, Trent Lott, excuse me, or Joe Walsh or with those guys, I just don't, I don't think. I think it's, you know, there's a sort of like, some of it's just like, am, a hack, so who cares? And some of it's like, am, a performance artist who cares? So I don't actually think it's going to matter all that much. Let me give you one more argument about this. This is kind of the pro-Sasha argument from Charlie Worsall of BuzzFeed, who wrote a column about. His whole, one thing he's written about a whole lot is that the old media is not actually prepared for trolls, right?

They don't know what to do, whether it's, you know, 60 Minutes or Megan Kelly trying to do her Alex Jones piece, right? And so he kind of writes about how Sachs Baron Cohen is actually equipped to go in and fight these people. It's the opposite, he says, of the, you know, they go low, we go high thing, right? It's they go low, we go low. And so that he says about Baron Cohen, he pits bad faith against bad faith, and the result is something that seems like the truth but isn't easy to watch. And somehow that feels fitting for our current moment, which I thought was nicely said. and I think

I think there's something there's something to that when you have you know it's like for us trying to sit back and under it's like when we're talking about Trump earlier

us trying to sit back and understand Alex Jones right there's certainly things to be written there's certainly things to be understood but at some point right

that that you know that sort of way of trying to tackle that subject goes away and something like this is much better and much more effective

yeah I mean listen my full review was that I, you know, I'm interested to see where the show goes. I'm not, I'm not ready to cast judgment. Alison Herman wrote a nice piece about it on the ringer today. She did. About how, I mean, the title is that it was that the show, I'm going to get the show wrong.

Or I went up yesterday after the show, but who is America's best when it's not funny? And, you know, I think that that's going to be sort of the, how we judge the whole thing. Is at the end of it, do we remember laughing or do we remember sitting like somewhat, you know, aghast or just feeling bad about the laughter or whatever else? It's, it's, you know, if it's just a series of gags,

it's not going to amount to anything. So it'll be interesting to see, I think they said Cheney's next week. So, I mean, that's going to be, you know, it'll be interesting to see what kind of waves it makes beyond just the bubble that we've been talking about. I think we just wrote a Sasha Baron Kuhin think piece. I have bad news. we furthered the

we furthered the pile of these anyway yeah we're not we're not doing any we're not doing any uh we're not we're not helping with the with the wait and see and let's let's think clearly about this as it goes on cause you're right I feel more ashamed than Trent Lott okay that's the press box this week thanks to our very long suffering producer

Jim Cunningham who dealt with our technological malfunctions this week David Shuebaker and I will be back next week with more hot takes about the media talk to you then David see you later man You're a capital J journalist, or you're full of shit. You mangled apricot hellbeast. Weapons grade plumb.

You clueless numpty. Yeah, I was going to have Brian Winhorst on this week, but fuck that guy. Yeah. You spoon.