The Press Box - Twenty Years of ‘PTI’ and Nick Kristof Is Running for Governor?

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Bryan and David discuss the 20-year anniversary of 'Pardon the Interruption' and highlight the layout of the show, the chemistry between Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, and touch on how the show has changed the sports talk landscape (7:05). Later, they break down Nick Kristof’s decision to leave his job at The New York Times to run for governor of Oregon (32:35). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emmy Award-winning producer, actor and comedian Larry Wilmore is back on the air, hosting a podcast where he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the world of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond. Check out Larry Wilmore, Black on the Air on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, I was looking at some old best books of the year lists over the weekend. Great. As one does. Mm-hmm.

I was looking for podcasts. material, let's be honest. But I'm scouring New York Times notable nonfiction of year fill in the blank. Yeah. And I noticed something very interesting. Every year there are a few truly great books that the Times and other papers would describe as brilliant

or authoritative. And then there's a much larger substrata of books that make these year-end lists that are good rather than great. Okay. And the Times uses certain, adjectives to describe them. Would you like to hear

some of the words that are used to describe the merely good rather than great book? Oh yes, please. These are actual examples from the New York Times, kids. Number one, solid. Yeah.

Solid. You've written a book. If the review had said a solid history of professional wrestling. How would you have felt about that? I mean, you would take that, depending on the source. Yeah, I did write a book, but I know I'm already relating to these more as a former, like, editorial assistant and book publishing whose job, you know, it was to cobble together the cover quotes based on the long reviews. You wouldn't, you wouldn't, you wouldn't, you couldn't like out and out lie, right? I mean, you're not going to like just take words from out, you know, out of sequence from different sentences and put together, you know, false praise. But you do have to be a little bit artful with it. And I'm just, it's, yeah, making the

decision of whether or not to put solid dot dot dot a winning history you know whether whether you put the solid in there is it can be a very like you know heart-rending moment how about this word for the cover fluent fluent a fluent history of 19th century england yes if the if the if the if the subject is is difficult scholarly um you know exactly Then I guess fluent can be a, you know, can be a not entirely faintest of faint praise, but faint praise nonetheless. I love this one because we've seen it so much over the years. Winning.

What is winning? Yeah. Winning is like a book with a good attitude. Like what does that even mean? Yeah. It made me feel good. Didn't make me feel inspired. Didn't make me feel great.

But it made me feel good. No, it's like the book tried its best, and you know what? There were some ups and downs, but the book kept its head up through the entire 450 pages. It was a winning book. These two adjectives are kind of the same, reliable or level-headed. Yeah, yeah. A level-headed history. A level-headed treatment of abortion rights.

Yes. Reliable, yeah, reliable implies some consistency, I think maybe, may serve more as a compliment to the author. But yeah, and level-headed, I guess, fits that mold, too. When you kind of personify a book with those adjectives, it doesn't exactly make you want to run to the bookstore to grab it, but I guess those things are compliments. It seems like a compliment for a fair treatment of a tricky subject.

Something that makes people mad. This is a level-headed. Levelhead, right. This is not, it's not scholarly, but it's certainly not, this is not, you know, partisan or history in the service of some greater ideal. This is, it just kind of keeps its cool through the retelling of whatever is being told. Again, if I were the one receiving the praise level headed for a book I had worked on for years, not sure I would be totally, totally ecstatic about that. But here's my favorite, David. the adjective the New York Times uses to describe books that are good rather than great readable I never know how to take readable right because on the one hand like part of the assumption when you're going to a source like the New York Times book review or the book section is that they're better at reading than we are right so like I like I don't even want

like why would they even be what's it they should be there these are these like highbrow speed readers that could just tear through the stuff and parse it out and write the good review. Readable should not be a meaningful term for them unless it means something different. Now, if you were like, dude, I read this biography of, you know, whatever, of like Robert E. Lee, it's like 850 pages, but it was readable. You know, like it wasn't just a brick that you can, that you're never going to actually get past the first chapter on because of its density. That would be meaningful between you and me. So I guess it could be meaningful coming from the reviewer as well, but I don't know. It just, I think it's a little bit backhanded, right? It's either,

it's either a slight, like, this is not, this is not like literature. This is not a movie script, but it's readable or it's sort of a backhanded slap at the genre, right? It's like, presidential or like, you know, historical presidential biographies are often very dry. This one was readable at the least. It was, you know, you got from page one to page X and you did it. You're able to make it through. I don't know. It's very strange. You should never use any of these with your friends. If your friend writes a book or sends you a piece and says, what do you think? Never say that, well, it was readable. That's not a nice thing to say. If it's what you mean, you mean if you're writing a review, like you're writing a blurb for one of your friends? No, I just mean in an email or something.

Oh, yeah. I was going to say, if you're writing a blur for one of your friends, I think you're legally obligated to say this is the book the world has been waiting for, which is the greatest non-valued judgment praise you could possibly heap on somebody. Coming up on today's podcast, the ESPN show PTI turns 20 years old this week. Why has it been so successful and so easy to watch without feeling terrible about yourself? Plus, a New York Times columnist leaves the paper to run for governor and the battle over colon pal obit headlines. All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with producer Erica

Cervantes. David, this is a big week in sports television. It is the 20th anniversary of Pardon the Interruption. Oh, yeah. Or PTI, as it's known. It was a show had its proper debut on October 22nd, 2001. It featured Mike Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, who were then sports columnists at the Washington Post,

opining about various topics. You and I have watched a ton of this show. Where do we start with PTI? This is tough. I mean, when I was just trying to inhale as much PTI content and memory and everything else as I could leading up to this, I kind of think I got to the, I came around to the idea that you kind of start,

you can start at the end or start at the beginning, but it's just sort of this endless loop of quality content, right? I mean, it's, I think one of the most stunning things when you, is that, you know, when you watch the sort of documentary, the ESPN put together, you read all the articles about the show, they always talk about, that they kind of stumbled out of the gate a little bit,

they had to work out some kinks, whatever. For a show that's been running for 20 years, it has been remarkably consistent. And I don't mean that as fake end of the year book praise. This is not just reliable or level-h-h-able. Yeah, it's not just watchable. But there is a sort of like timelessness to it. You know, I mean, you can watch, you could watch, you know,

the reaction to the Cardinals firing their manager or whatever. I mean, just recently, and it just feels of a piece. of the, you know, the takes that they were doing at the very beginning 20 years ago. And it's, it's, you know, there's a lot to be said for that. And I think from the very beginning, really what made the show, one of the drivers, what made the show really successful is the comfort that the two hosts had with one another and the comfort that you felt watching them. And I think that sort of spins out into the comfort of being able to watch a highlight

from any point in the past 20 years and just being, and like feeling like you know where you are, feeling grounded in the conversation. 20 years is such a long time. In television years, that's like 100 years. Yeah. Just think of anything you were watching 20 years ago.

Chances are it's not on the air anymore. It's like the daily show. It's hosted by a different person. Or it just sucks now. Nothing is good for 20 years. So that is an incredible achievement what you just said and should probably be the headline of this whole thing. Mm-hmm. And even when you think about, I mean, you say TV years and these things kind of flow in and out.

But like, just think about the 20-year vet at your like local sports radio station. You know, the sort of like living legend that occupies a slot. They're not, if they're not quite put out to pasture, they certainly like have like they create a different chair for those people, right? They're not usually doing the day in and day out grind or they've like reduced their show to a certain piece of a show that so other people are doing or doing the grinding. The consistency, you know, keeping the same job in sports, whether it be radio TV or even writing is, I mean, nobody does the same thing for 20 years. Certainly not the level that they've been doing this. A couple of notes I had about it. One is the anti-television quality of PTI.

Mm-hmm. the sense that here were back in 2001 to Washington Post columnists that looked, no offense, because we certainly looked apart too, like Washington Post columnists, and you did not give off that air of, man, I cannot wait to get to television.

Right. No, they go Google PTI and just look at an image of them sitting like the still shot of the show they carry newsroom exhaustion in their posture. Like when you, they're like them from the moment that you see them, right? I mean, they're just,

they're like creatures from like so, they are more from a newsroom than like Siskel and Ebert were, which is obviously the point of reference for so much of what they did. And they, but yeah, I mean, they're just, they are so telegenic in so many ways,

but not in any conventional way at all. Yes. They're telegenic because they're not telegenic. So then you look at them and you're like, I want to see what these two guys have to say. Very similar to Siskel and Ebert in the sweater vests, I think. And that was certainly a model for PTI. I mean, there's all the stories also about Tony Kornheiser and Pablo Torre covered this in the pod series he did about the making of the show, not wanting to be on television and not wanting to do PTI. I looked up an old piece I wrote and Mike Wilbon said this.

me way back in 2006. On the first day of PTI, Tony walked into the office and said, I hope you people are renting, not buying. I said, Tony, we have two years of guaranteed money. Worst case, we're back out on the golf course. Tony said, worst case, that's my best case. And not only is that a funny story, that came through on the show. Oh, yeah.

That sense of, you know, we're here. we have a sports show, but we kind of find this funny. We find this a little weird that ESPN gave us this platform. And not some of those people who, by the way, including every current sports writer just about who's on ESPN, looks like they would have just donated nine vital organs to get on television. Oh, yeah. They gave it to us.

They gave it to us. That absolutely flows through PTI. It does. it does. I mean, that was, you know, the titles of all Tony's books were very tongue-in-cheek that way. It's sort of like, you know, what was it? Back for all the bucks or whatever. I mean, it was always very just sort of, I don't have to be here, right? And that's the, I mean, and that's sort of what made, again, going to from their posture to their delivery to everything else. They felt, it felt like an obligation, but not in a bad way. It felt like an

obligation on a number of levels that they were, you know, they could have been doing something else, also they felt like it was their obligation to sort of inform the viewer, right? I mean, there was a very, there was, you know, sharing their opinions wasn't exactly a mission, but it did seem like a necessity for them. And I think that's part of it. You know, they talked about this, their relationship, and certainly the DNA of the show started in the newsroom of the Washington Post, right? I mean, they were just too noisy guys who were, you know, yelling at each other playfully

throughout the day. And, and if, like I said, if it wasn't exactly a mission, these conversations were going to happen regardless. So they were a necessity in that sense, right? For these two guys to sort of function, they were doing the show on or off TV. Yes. And I think when you have that slight amount of distance,

now they certainly did sports opinions, and it were not, it's not like they were going up there and saying things they didn't believe. But when you have just that amount of distance from the medium of television, it really gets you off the hook in a lot of ways because people aren't coming to say, well, what does Tony think about the Red Sox

evening the series with the Astros? They're coming for Tony. Yeah. They're coming for the relationship. And I almost felt like, you know, these guys had been sports columnists at the post for so long that they're like, we have had so many chances at bat

to write our opinions about sports. That is what we do all week and have done all week every year for years. We've had our shots of that. Like, giving our opinion on television is not the absolute nirvana here. Right. It is having this thing together and talking together and having this moment together. And we can just hold this, again, so different than so many people that are on sports television. We can just hold this just at a little bit of a distance from ourselves. I wonder, and I'm sure someone commented on this, but I wonder, I can't imagine that there's a new, a news program, be it, you know, CNN type show or a sports news program that is, with the exception now, first take

or whatever, that is, that is less, but even that, even, that is less reliant on, on topicality, right? I mean, like, I'm sure there are people who tuned in specifically to see what they had to say on about their favorite teams when something good or bad happened. But I, I don't, I mean, I've never watched an episode of PTI because of what the subject matter was going to be, right? I mean, you watch it because you're watching it or you're not, but you watch it because their conversation is going to be usually more interesting than whatever they're talking about. The show is topical, but not topic reliant. Right.

It doesn't, it doesn't, they could be talking about anything in those segments. And it doesn't matter. I also says on Bill's show the other day and I want to repeat it here because it is so important to understand that in 2001, PTI was a kind of answer to and certainly antidote to 90 sports radio. We did not have embraced debate culture on television like we have now and would have a few years after PTI was founded. But we had 90 sports radio. That was the year sports radio just went into Hyperdrive.

And Jim Rome was a huge national star. There was a lot of good stuff there, including Tony's own show, that was stuff that was interesting and different and played around with the medium. But there was a lot of tune in today for my big opinions about the Cowboys and Michael Jordan. Yeah. And they're coming in and they're going, you've heard all that. Now we're going to do something different. We are not doing that thing that you've heard.

And there's a bunch of us, and I think I put you and I in this category that loved sports talk radio and also found it completely ridiculous. Oh, yeah. And they create this show where you can have all the cool stuff about sports radio, which is, you're opining about sports. They're talking about this thing we watched last night, but you don't feel like shit at the end of it. You don't feel embarrassed to turn it on in the car with like your child

or your significant other or whomever. You're like, it's okay for me to like this. Yeah. That is a huge part of the appeal here. Well, it's true. I mean, it's sort of a healthy calorie. approach what was going on in sports talk. I mean, they also on the other side kind of butted up against the rise of advanced metrics in sports. And certainly both of them took varying degrees

of sort of, you know, old man umbrage against the waves of Sabre metrics and whatever else. But they also, I think, more importantly, suffered from, I mean, at time, I mean, ran the risk of suffering from being too general in a world that was becoming more and more statistical and specific, right? And yet, I remember feeling that at times in the past. And at some point, that just sort of went by the wayside. One, because they're able to have high-level conversations regardless of their information, of how they're drawing their information. No one's, they're not, they're not dumbing down the discourse, no matter how they're, no matter what, you know, how they arrive at their conclusions. And so maybe that mattered less. But also, I just think it's some

point, as we keep saying, the relationship, the format, the show itself wins out, right? They can, as long as there, as long as the discourse stays unembarrassing, it stays high level, it stays respectable, then, you know, they could keep doing this forever, regardless of what the, you know, waves or fads and information gathering are. It's also a very programmed show, PTI. guy. It's not only does it have those, you know, very finite segments about the various topics, but you can actually see the programming on the side of the screen.

Oh, yeah. Which may be the most ripped off television gimmick of the last 20 years. For sure. I mean, and again, Eric Riedholm, who's the executive producer and creative genius behind the show, deserves a lot of credit for these things. I think he's very, very good at just programming within a show. But I just remember a couple years ago, I was watching Trump. do the state of the union and NBC News had the topics from the state of the union on the side scroll.

PTI style. And I'm going, that's PTI. Yeah. The state of the union is now PTI. Yeah. I mean, that's seriously one of the most modern innovations, right? I mean, for a show that does feel a little bit kind of in its own parallel timeline. in terms of presentation, everything,

it's been doing the same thing for so long. I mean, it's easy to overlook that. They saw 20 years ago that it's not just about the discussion, but it's about the discussion that's going to come next. And it also goes to the comprehensiveness of the show or the sort of like the, as much as the show could seem off the cuff, there was a sort of comfort in the fact that, like, there was a structure and there was a plan,

to the whole thing, right? Yes. Yes. You felt you were, you know, kind of in the hands of this intelligent, intelligently designed thing. Yes. Like, I know what's happening. And by the way, it also solves a big problem.

We talked to with Rosilla a little bit about this the other day of national sports talk, which is I do not care about the Cardinals firing their manager. Yeah. I want to be just completely up front. I do not give a damn about the Cardinals firing their manager. But I can look and see that in 42 seconds, they're going to be talking about something else. Yeah. And I may care about that.

And then I can see that two or three topics down the list, there's something I really am interested in. And I know it's just such a simple solution to this sports talk problem. Yeah. But once you put the side scroll on and once you segment the show in that particular way, people will ride with it. Mm-hmm. You also mentioned the chemistry between the two of those guys. I'd like to unpack that just a smidge at the risk using the word unpack. Go right ahead.

There's a couple of things. So they're friends from the Washington Post Newsroom. They're co-equals in the Washington Post Newsroom. We both made it to the top job of the sports page, columnist. It's not young guy, old guy. It's not Big Brother, Little Brum. brother, we both got to the same spot. I may shake my head at the column he always writes. I may get tired of him doing that, you know, milking that device a hundred times, but we're the same,

him and I. I think that's a big, big deal as a part of this. Yeah. Little different than Cisco and Iber, right? Siskel and Iber are competitors on different newspapers. And there's some sense of like, I think I'm a better critic than that guy on the other paper. Mike and Tony, there's certainly a little bit of attention, I'm sure, a pride of authorship there. Like, I can write a good column. I'll write a better column than him today. But it's almost like competitors, friendly competitors on the same team, if that makes sense. Yeah. That's right.

I think that especially, I mean, you made the Sports Talk Radio comparison a number of times. But the Sports Talk Radio is always just like, well, it's a put on of us against the world. right, but everybody's, you know, it's, it's, it's everybody on the station, most everybody will be on the same page, right? We're all, we all hate the Mavericks or the, you know, we hate the Cowboys coach right now. We love the players, like, whatever. Or you have a player. I mean, there's, it's generally everybody has very similar opinions and they're definitely on the same page, right? So this, but, but, you know, what's really interesting about the PTI and their, their relationship is that they do have differing opinions. And that's part of, that's sort of the inverse of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the. sports talk radio issue that you brought up right they're not just talking about one market they're not just talking about the same issues they have you know they can talk about whatever they want they talk about all the news of the day um but yeah i mean it's it's a it's a their personalities their relationships the there was a competition there for sure um but it was almost like a playoff of the ciscoll and ebert relationship right ciscoll and ebert were adversely

or adversarial, and that was part of what made them work. What the PTI guys have done is to be able to sort of wink at that. So when they are at their most adversarial, it just diffuses with a single smile and the segment's over, you know, but they can use the tension that we, they can use the tricks that we understand from Ciskel and Ebert, you know, and on the other hand, from sports radio, they can, that's in the toolbox. but then they do it with a wink and it makes it somehow even, you know, there's no anxiety and it's somehow more powerful that way too because as much of a put-on as so many of these

conversations are. I mean, literally, you know, they wore masks on the show. They were literal put-ons. And there were also times where you could tell that they were sort of, they were certainly trying to find the space in which they disagreed on the subject the most to make that the talking point. PTI seems, I think, less contrived than anything. else in sports television sense, right? And even sports radio and anything else. Which is weird because

it's so programmed. It's programmed, but it doesn't feel like insultingly contrived. Absolutely agree. You know, you absolutely hit it. And I would also say that when you're talking about the relationship, both those guys are kind of gruff. Gruff is kind of their default emotion or default sort of face, I think, a lot of the time. There's also a little vulnerability. there where the other guy can be more right about the topic than I am this time. Yeah. Like, I might lose the argument. Yeah, it's okay to lose the argument. You know what? It's especially okay to lose the argument if, you know, the clock is counted down and it's time to move on to another argument that you might win, you know, just you're, it's just brief arguments amongst

good friends here. And I would just, that, but if we were ever giving free advice to anyone starting a podcast or a sports television show, I'd be like, in, vulnerability isn't going to work. Maybe it works if you're Jim Rome. Maybe he's got the lane. But if you're going on there and you're saying, I'm never going to be wrong, I'm never going to admit that my partner got me today or just said this in a way that I was struggling to say it, your show is not going to work.

Yeah. People like vulnerable. They don't like invulnerable, bulletproof. And you're the smartest guy in the way. the room every single time. Yeah, that's a really good point. That's a dink, and we can end this here. There have been like a handful of shows throughout TV or recent TV history that have

kind of hit this sweet spot. And I don't want to gussy up PTI too much. It's a sports television show. And I don't think Tony and Mike would appreciate us gussing it up too much. But there are a handful of shows that are, they do the thing they are purporting to do. And they are also a parody of the thing they're putting. reporting to do? Yes. Yes. So think of like Letterman early 80s as a late night talk show and a kind of a parody of a late night talk show. Certainly the John Stewart Daily show being a new show

and a parody of a new show. Yeah. PTI gives you the sports opinion. They have an opinion probably about that Cardinals manager being fired. But it is also a very skillful parody of a sports opinion show. Yes. Everything is everything happens with a wink. Yes. And if you can hit that sweet spot, man, it's hard to do, but that's a great place to be. In some ways, the world that they created benefited them as much as it did. I mean, as much as it did the successors, right? Because at the beginning, as we discussed, I mean, the wink was to Crossfire or to Siskel and Ebert or to, you know, the sports reporters or like, what, you know, whatever it was. I mean, they, they, they had references and they were able to engage in a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek way

because they had that vocabulary, right? But as ESPN and now Fox Sports, you know, started making more and more conversation or sports argument shows, that became the vocabulary, right? And PTI, even though those are all based on PTI, PTI can be ironically referencing its own successors when it, when they, you know,

go at it with tongue in cheek. Does that make sense? Yeah, but isn't that a weird order? Yeah. It's like if the Daily Show had come before the O'Reilly factor. Yeah, I think that they were more self-aware by the, almost by default, you know, by the fact that they were self-assured and they, you know, were confident as human beings and as writers and his thinkers and everything else. And because the stakes were probably relatively low, that they, I don't know. know. I just feel like it was always a put on for them, right? They were always just two guys who

weren't supposed to be on TV. And so they were always playing something that they weren't, even though the conversation was honest and they were human, they were real humans, right? So now they're surrounded in this fish tank by a bunch of people who were maybe, you know, genetically engineered to be on TV. And they're still as out of places they ever were. And they're probably happy to be that way. They're probably happy to not have, you know, to be in a fish tank full of, full of, you know, PTI guys. I just find that funny because it's usually somebody does the thing and then somebody else deconstructs the thing. And here it went in the opposite order a little bit. Yeah, because, I mean, the success of PTI, I mean, it certainly created a success for a million shows that came after it.

But I don't think anybody saw PTI and said the lesson to be learned here is ironic self-awareness. No, it's too likable dudes arguing with each other. And that's what, I mean, at a minimum, that's the thing you're able to replicate. You know, you could search for the rest of your life and maybe not find the Cornheiser-Wilbon relationship that translates to TV. But, you know, the part that you can do in a little bit more of an assembly line fashion is the unironic version of it. So that's, and that's been really successful too. David, I want to talk to you about Nick Christoph for governor, but first let's do 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. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. A tweet from the Hill, David. Anthony Fauci says Americans can enjoy holidays with family. if fully vaccinated. It's an overwork Twitter joke to write, no vaccine is that strong. Thanks to gruns.

I don't know how late you were up Saturday night, but maybe you caught the Tennessee Ole Miss college football game, which was delayed for 20 minutes while fans threw junk onto the field, including a golf ball that hit Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin. It was a very overwork Twitter joke

to post a photo of George Costanza, from the Seinfeld episode where the golf ball got stuck in the whales blowhole. Brandishing the golf ball. And finally, David, what former Vegas Raiders coach John Gruden wrote in his emails

was not funny. But some of the tweets were. Let me give you a few of them. John Gruden is about to make 10 times what the Raiders were paying him on substack. John Gruden has resigned. Here's why that's bad news for Biden's infrastructure bill.

And finally, John Gruden, who I do not support, taught me more about cover two than all other football announcers combined by Glenn Greenwald. Thanks to David C. Pumpkin, Spy God, and Mike's dad, if you made a smile, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. In the notebook dump, David, very interesting story at the New York Times last week. Nicholas Christoff, the longtime opinion columnist, is leaving the paper after 37 years.

Christoph may run for governor of Oregon where he spent most of his childhood in teenage years. He says in a statement, I may be an idiot to leave, but you all know how much I love Oregon and how much I've been seared by the suffering of old friends there. So I've reluctantly concluded that I should try

not only to expose problems, but also see if I can fix them directly. What do we think of Nick Christoph for governor? Wow. I don't even know what to think. I mean, listen, it's nice to see somebody who may potentially be good at this, actually kind of putting their money where their mouth is, not that this was, you know, not that calling this shot and not following through

was a big problem for Nick Christoph up to this point. But someone actually wants to pursue, I think, in Christoph's case, the greater good by actually starting sort of, not at the grassroots, but at the local level, if he could, I mean, if I don't think that the state of Oregon would be badly served to have someone like Nick Christoph in the governor's seat. And I don't think that in the abstract, it would be a bad idea if, you know, people as thoughtful as Christoph were pursuing these sorts of careers more frequently. How many political columnists would you say that about? We would not be badly served. We would not be badly served. I mean, we would not be

badly served that they were governor of so-and-so state. I mean, it's tough. I know the question you're asking, but I do think that you run immediately up against the sort of question of why, like, you know, is it a good idea to kind of be, to run for governor as your first political campaign, right? Not both in terms of not in terms of, not in terms of,

is there something, are there things you should learn before you get to hire, you know, the biggest job in the state? by working your way up through other jobs, et cetera. I mean, I think that there's, I think that it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing to say, even if you think someone is the most gifted person in the world at potentially doing it. You know, it's, I'm not, I'm not sure that I'm equipped to answer this question any more than I think that I would say that Christoph is equipped to take the job.

But I do think that as far as columnists go, Christoph does seem actually sort of committed to the greater good. And at least as his, as he sees that. And he's also, you know, seems to be a comparatively very thoughtful and level-headed person. I feel like you could praise him with many of the nonfiction book descriptors that we talked about earlier. He's reliable, you know, as a columnist. And you can only sort of extrapolate into his personhood through what you've read about him, what you read by him, sorry.

So I think that is an interesting element here that he's less of like the opinion slinger political columnist than he is the moral force political columnist. columnist. I mean, just looking over recent columns in the New York Times to give you a few, one woman's journey through Chinese atrocities, ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia, child marriage around the world. The biggest threat to America is America itself. The big problem isn't Russia or China. It's creeping mediocrity. He comes at it from a very unique point of view. I think it's also interesting. He has a very particular kind of native son. probably one, an archetype that you and I would recognize without the fancy degrees.

He grew up on a farm in Oregon, spent his younger years and high school years there, then leaves and goes to Harvard, then Oxford on a road scholarship, then American University in Cairo, and then the New York Times. He has devoted now columns at the New York Times to Oregon and various problems there, collected all that in a book last year called Tightrope that he wrote with his wife, Cheryl Wu done. So it's interesting, right? I mean, you know, then you're coming back.

You could absolutely see the, if he were to capture, well, I guess they both in the Democratic primary, presumably and then in the, in the general election, you know, he will be surely criticized for not living in Oregon for all that time for coming back.

But it is a very, very interesting idea that some like this could run for office. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of, I mean, we hear people,

especially like celebrities and people with big platforms, sort of float these ideas a lot. And at some point you get the idea that, I mean, you get the feeling that it's sort of a, the trial balloon is more of just like a, an ego trip, right? Where you're trying to figure out,

you're trying to just kind of not gauge the likelihood of you winning, but gauge the sort of, just just to sort of like a, accumulate the paths on the back and the positive phone calls and the, you know, and the, the online references to your name and positive ones, hopefully. And certainly there's a publicity, you know, a PR aspect to that too, right? I mean, but, but it's nice to see it, I mean, despite the fact that that that's a very modern thing, it feels very modern. Um, there's, there's a very sort of old-timey aspect to this, right?

I mean, it's not, I mean, it's that to be a sort of writer and thinker and then to say, you know, maybe these, maybe these tools would be of service to, to, you know, Americans on at the state level. I mean, that's a, you know, it's a, it feels, it feels sort of reassuring in a weird way. mentioned that he writes lots about human rights, traveled all over the place, written lots of probably has more interesting datelines

than just about any other columnist on that page. He's also become a very big star among celebrities, many of whom also have charities and various endeavors with human rights. I want to play this for you. Here is a video that George Clooney made

while traveling with Christoph to a refugee camp in Africa. I'm with a, really, really important writer won a Pulitzer Prize, in fact, for writing on this subject. Sharing a room, if you can see it, but Bose. And I suppose the lesson there is the surprise. And you get the shack up with the two-time sexiest man alone. That's George Clooney. Ben Affleck produced a documentary about Nick Krestos' work back in 2009.

also that I could share with you a brief and incomplete history of journalists running for office Okay Perhaps the most serious bid is Upton Sinclair for Governor of California in 1934 Which partly Part of which was seen in the movie Mank

I actually ran for governor a number of times But got the Democratic nomination that year And came within a few hundred thousand votes Of becoming governor of California For more of the long shot variety Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley both ran for Mayor of New York City in the 60s. Someone asked Buckley what he would do if he won

and his famous answer was demand a recount. We got blogger Mickey Kouse running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in California in 2010. It's Barbara Boxer. Got 5% of the vote in that election. Also, by the way, I want to ask you this. you have a New York Times columnist running for governor. As you say, a much admired New York Times columnist.

How long will the line be of other journalists wanting to write about the journalist running for office? Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, there's, I wonder if, I wonder if that was part of his farewell package for the New York Times. He had to, like, you know, he had to officially agree, give them first serialization on his campaign book or, you know, whatever. I mean, it's a, God, people are going to be just falling over themselves to write that story. Okay, so you just hit something really big. The Nick Christoph book about running for governor.

Ooh. Is that definitely happening? Yeah. Is he taking notes, win or lose, and we'll write this, we'll publish this book like one year into what would be his first term? Mm-hmm. I mean, he's a prolific writer, and he and his wife have written a number of books. And I think that it's, I think that part of the middle of the. mission must be to, you know, do, to get the firsthand experience, but explain what's going,

explain your experience to the world. Now, if like David Shoemaker from Politico goes up to the campaign and says, hey, I want to write about Nick Christoph's campaign for governor. Nick Christoph can't really say no to an interview, right? He's a journalist. Oh, you mean, having asked so many people for interviews over the years, he's got to say yes. Yeah, and politicians among them? I wonder. I wonder, I wonder if, I wonder if, I wonder if, I wonder if, I mean, I'm sure Politico will be, I mean, this is the sort of outlet that would definitely be covering it. I wonder if, if as far as like big mainstream national newspapers go, if some of them will kind of, you know, stand back, assuming that the New York Times is going to have this market covered or, you know, they're going to try to look for their own angles in it. I think everybody will write it.

Yeah. It's too good a story. Everybody's going to write it. And like I said, whenever a journalist can do somebody like me is doing something interesting. They always write that piece. That's speaking of sweet spots, that's right in it. David, I want to direct your attention before we go to the Colin Powell headline controversy. Or maybe the tweet controversy.

Colin Powell, former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died this morning before we recorded this podcast. A New York Times tweet came out, which was typical of an in-the-moment story that was pretty surprising. It said, breaking news, Colin Powell has died at 85. of COVID-19. He was fully vaccinated, his family said. Pretty quickly, there was a tweet

from John Roberts, who has since deleted it, reading this, the fact that Colin Powell died from a breakthrough COVID infection, raises new concerns about how effective vaccines are long-term. So on the one hand, we had that route.

Then I saw this tweet from Matthew Ingram of the Columbia Journalism Review, and this was echoed across Twitter, Seeing a lot of news alerts and headlines saying Colin Powell died of COVID while vaccinated. But virtually none of them mentioned that he had a massive comorbidity, multiple myeloma or blood cancer. This kind of thing is part of the problem. Yeah. I mean, it is.

It's difficult to fit enough information into a push alert or push notice, especially when the subject matter has become politicized or is, you know, deemed divisive certainly by the newsrooms, right? I mean, how can you, um, it's, you could just say Colin Powell has died and let, you know, the article itself tell the story, but then you're still putting things in order of preference, right? I mean, you're still, you're still ranking the comorbidities in terms of, of which the order that you put them in. So, I mean, it's a sad say of affairs. Also, I mean, it's really frustrating that there's such a just that there's not just confused.

I mean, there's going to be confusion around the vaccines and their effectiveness and everything else. But there's a lot of people that are, obviously, that are raising these, raising such concerns inauthentically, right? They're raising the concerns to sort of stoke the fore. the flames of of anti- whatever.

They want to be, they're promoting. And there's also a lot of people who are, I don't know, is John Roberts fits this description or not, who are just getting out there with uninformed opinions that really,

you know, they're, they probably think they're trying to be helpful, but they're doing, they're really not being helpful at all. It's just a mess. And I, I don't know.

We can talk about the right way to be writing those push alerts, but I'm not sure that's going to solve the sort of bigger problem. Well, it feels like every push alert is reacting to something else. Like we already said. We've talked about how headlines now are so scrutinized. Yeah. Because the headline comes out and all of Twitter pounces. And sometimes you read the story and the story there's nothing wrong with the story.

But the headline was off. So the headline gets destroyed. as they say on Twitter. Well, here's a case where clearly Colin Powell dies of COVID-19, somebody at the New York Times or somebody is immediately saying,

I don't know, he was fully vaccinated. We want you to know that he was fully vaccinated. Like, that's important. He wasn't, you know, there wasn't something like that.

They think they are reacting to something else, which is an immediate question. Whereas then now, the criticism is, no, no, you were not reacting to the right thing. Yeah.

You need to also mention this. And again, I think they're probably right. There is a certain complication there, but my gosh, there's so many things to think about in that, you know, two minutes that somebody is writing that headline. It is. It is. I mean, and just the perception that that you are going to politicize it if you don't get it exactly right is, you know, halting. And it probably will lead you to get it wrong. Listener, Brian Rice asks us, David, if we did not have a rare legitimate breaking of silence, it is, it is from. Christopher Steele, former British spy Christopher Steele, author of the Steele dossier,

Christopher Steele breaks his silence in ABC interview. Is Christopher Steele big enough that this is a legitimate breaking of silence? I think so. I mean, I think, listen, the breaking of the silence thing, justifiably maligned by you and by us, but I do think that there's an extent to which the silence, the only, you know, only the source or the, the, the writer is really no to what degree the silence has been broken, right? I mean, you don't necessarily need to show receipts, but as a writer,

like, have you been, have you been texting this person once a month to see if they're willing to go on the record yet? You know, like, that would be, that's really how you would gauge if the silence is broken, but this, but just in terms of stature and significance in time past, yes, this is a, this is a silence breaking that I can get behind. Yeah, the, the one we had last week was Matthew McConaughey breaks his silence on running for Texas governor. Not a legit breaking of silence. This one we will accept narrowly. Last one, David from Lister, Steve Grainning.

Question for David. What do you think of Fox's NFL player caricatures? How long did those take and how deep is their database every position player from opening day rosters? So if people don't know when there's like a touchdown or significant play, Fox will put up a art caricature of the player like Russell Wilson or Dack Prescott or whomever that looks like it came from SB Nation Longform five years ago. Yeah.

What as an art director do you make of those caricatures? I got to be honest, I thought, I think at first, I just, I thought that they were computer generated, at least to some degree. I mean, there's certainly illustrations based on photos, and that's something that we, you know, it's nothing. We all do stuff like that for different, in different ways. But I, yeah, I thought that it was just like an algorithm drew those things. I guess, you know, when you look at them more, it seems like, no, they're done one at a time, again, based on photos and whatever else.

There's definitely a lot of photoshopping undergirding it. You know, for me, they're a little bit too, there's not as much, there's not a lot of personality in the illustration or the people. it's just very, they're very staid, you know, they're almost, it's almost too much an attempt to be realistic. But when you do these kind of things, it's really hard because if you work with any style at all, you're going to end up getting some really bad likenesses. So some, so what you, you basically have to default to sort of the most basic sort of treatment in which they did and which is not, I mean, listen, it's, it's, it's, it's cool. It definitely spices things up. How deep do they go always an interesting one.

I bet they go pretty, pretty deep, man. I mean, if they're, if they're ready. The backup tight end, do you think is on there

if he catches a touchdown? I don't know. I don't know. I think in three or four, a team, I think every quarterback, for sure, and then like big,

famous wide receivers and running backs, maybe, I don't know. I can't, I can't imagine it goes much deeper than that. But maybe there's a button. Maybe they've done more

as that, you know, they could be working on it right now as the season progresses. you know, just get everybody in there. Time for David Schuemaker gets as the strain pun headline. All right. Last Monday's headline about the Seahawks losing by nine points

and Russell Wilson injuring his finger was single digit defeat. Gosh, so dumb. I mean, so dumb of me for not getting it. Today's headline comes from our great friend, Scott Tobias. It's from the Rockaway Times earlier this year. David, it's a feature story about a man who feeds eagrits, as in the marine birds, eagrits. And a few of these birds have come year after year to visit the man.

Pretty cool. What was the Rockaway Times' strained pun headline? To visit the man. I grits. Oh, egrits, I've had a few. Oh, you are very close. You're right on it. What if we started with a man?

A man and his. A man. He doesn't have many. He doesn't have many egresses. A few regrets. A few egress. A man with a few egress. A man with a few egress.

Yeah, there we go. You pounced on that really well. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Coming Friday, we break down the big media movie of the week. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch Plus more lukewarm takes about the media

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.