The Press Box - What’s Next After the Trump-Harris Debate? Plus: Tom Brady Week 2 and Anchorman-Producer Meltdowns.

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David are back to discuss what’s next after the Donald Trump–Kamala Harris debate (4:00). They share their thoughts on the moderators (6:15), JD Vance’s responses to the "cats and dogs" comment (9:32), and Kamala Harris’s performance (17:26). Later in the notebook dump they react to the following: Linda Deutsch's legacy as a court reporter (32:10) How iconic James Earl Jones’s voice was (35:00) Plus a couple of TV host–TV producer meltdown clips (37:57) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? Syriot Sohey from the Ringer here, and I wanted to let you know about a new show that I'm hosting, the Ringer WNBA show. We're breaking down and analyzing the latest happenings in the W, the personalities, the people who make the league as fascinating as it is, and we're going to be featuring some of the best guests and experts from around the league. Tap in with us every Friday through the end of the season over on the Ringer NBA show feed

on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David? Yes. We got to start with the news of the day. which is that on Sunday Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI says appears to be an attempted assassination. The suspect in custody,

Ryan Wesley Rout, 58-year-old former construction worker from North Carolina. He was in court in Florida this morning. On Sunday, while Trump was golfing in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Secret Service saw a man in the bushes with a rifle an agent shot at the man. Ralph was later arrested. In your time says, quote,

Trump was a few hundred yards away when gunfire rang out and he was not injured. Now, when a figure like Ralph emerges in the news, we know what reporters do. Interview neighbors, family members, former classmates, there's now a lot of combing

through social media accounts. all to answer very basic questions. Who is this person? What is our first pass at what their motive might be? Well, Ryan Wesley Routh was known to reporters because he had his own strange trip as a media subject last year. New York Times is Thomas Gibbons Neff,

who was one of their reporters in Ukraine, interviewed Ralph, You remember after the Russian invasion, there were lots of people in the United States and around the world that said in a kind of nebulous way, I want to help. Oh, yeah. I want to go over there and do something. Well, Routh and try to follow me here was trying to recruit former Afghan soldiers who'd been displaced by the Taliban to come to Ukraine and fight against the Russian military. Okay. He did an interview with the New York Times, and Thomas Gibbons Neff writes,

by the time I got off the phone with Mr. Routh some minutes later, it was clear he was in way over his head. He talked of buying off corrupt officials, forging passports and doing whatever it took to get his Afghan cadre, only in journalism, to Ukraine, but he had no real way to accomplish his goals. Ralph also wound up giving an interview to Semaphore last year. And this was another interesting detail.

He has a self-published book on Amazon called Ukraine's Unwinnable War that reporters were also combing through and are combing through to try to get details to his identity. So that's what we know. And that's what reporters are doing slightly different than what they would normally do under these circumstances. All right, David, coming up on the pod, you and I are going to break down last week's first and maybe final. Harris Trump debate. We assess how Tom Brady did in week two. We'll say farewell to a legendary report reporter

and farewell to the voice of CNN. Plus, the Anchorman versus producer meltdowns you all are faithful listeners sent in. All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters here. We got to touch on the Harris-Trump,

debate from last week, David. Because you, sir, have not had a chance to weigh in it. I haven't given my takes yet. Haven't given your takes. Let me set you up for a few things here. First of all, the audience for the debate was 67 million people watching on TV. That does not count the number of people watching online. For context, the Super Bowl audience is a hundred-ish million people.

Yeah. So that's two-thirds of a Super Bowl audience. Now, we don't know the answer to this, but would you suspect that that has mostly to do with the matchup, with the actual politics of the situation, or is there a chance that this is like an actual, like discernible benefit from it running on all these different channels despite being hosted by just one?

Well, it always runs on all the channels. So that's But it hasn't But it's not always known As the ABC Or the sorry Yeah Yeah

Calling it the ABC News Debate did not Diswade anyone From watching it Who might have had an issue Like Donald Trump Does with ABC News Oh right

Okay So this is just interest In Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris I think the novelty Of the matchup Is a big part of it You look back

At very very Highly watched Highly rated debates Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump one stands out. And I, you know, you and I remember sitting down to watch that in 2016.

And part of watching it was, yes, this is our civic duty to watch these important moments in the course of a nation's history. And also, oh my God, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will be standing on the same stage

talking to each other. Yeah. This debate had a lot of that. Sure. I think. These are people, as we pointed out last week, had never met.

Kamala Harris is a new candidate relatively in this election. So there's a lot of things mixed in there. A big story coming out of the debate was the ABC moderators. David Muir and Lindsay Davis. What did you make of their fact checking in real time? I was going to say of the two candidates, but really it was just Donald Trump. I thought they did a great job. I thought they did a great job.

They kind of picked their spots and interjected themselves, interjected facts more appropriately into the proceedings. I mean, I wasn't surprised at the blowback from those on the right, on the right, or at least in the Trump camp. We thought it was unfair, but it's not an unfair, I mean, but it's not an even playing field when one of the candidates is just making up facts out of whole cloth and that they're predictable, you know, to some significant extent makes it a little bit easier. Um, but yeah, I mean, listen, there's a difference between the way that politicians have historically sort of fudged facts to make their points and just, just utter nonsense. Um, Trump's had a lot of success that's, that's, that is due to just just straight up lies that he tells. And, um, and, and, you know, a lot of his legitimacy comes from, being mostly unquestioned in those situations. It was justified, obviously. You look back at the bigness of the quote-unquote facts they were correcting. It's pretty staggering.

Mr. former president, you did not win the 2020 election. Yeah. Just so everybody knows that. We'll get to Cats and Dogs in Springfield, Ohio in just one second. You know, then you had stuff like crime rates. The FBI says crime. going down, that kind of stuff. But the stuff they were stepping into correct was really, really big stuff.

Yeah. This all felt like a correction from the Dana Bash Jake Tapper debate of a couple of months ago between Biden and Trump where they stood back. They didn't step into correct Donald Trump at all. Of course, there was a big storyline to that debate that had nothing to do with fact checking. It really wasn't paid a lot of attention to. but this this in a lot of ways both in the sharpness of the questions I thought and to both candidates and then also the in in sort of fact checking in the moment was very very different

let's talk about cats and dogs for a second because you'll remember Kamala Harris got asked a question about immigration this has been one of her worst issues so she pivots within her answer to making fun of Donald Trump because people leave his rallies early. Yeah. Somehow Donald Trump falls for this strategy, which is straight out of the Jason kid, I am playing mind games with the Celtics tier of obviousness.

Yeah. We are going to distract Donald Trump. We are going to get him off topic. Now we are employing the strategy. Here we go. We are doing it. Yeah. And yet,

he still falls for it, talks about his rallies, and then he gets to this notorious lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating dogs. Yeah. There's sort of a chain of custody here from the internet to J.D. Vance,

repeating it, to then Trump saying it. So Trump would himself insist that the people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So perhaps there's a Fox News, Newsmax missing step in there somewhere.

This is what J.D. Vance said with Dana Bash yesterday on CNN's State of the Union about that particular story. The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.

Dana because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris Coast. You had one interview with her. You talk about pushing back against me, Dana. You didn't push back against the fact that she cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which is why a lot of Americans can't afford food and housing. You just said that you're creating a story. Sorry, you just said that you're creating the story. What's that, Dana? You just said that this is a story that you created. So the eating dog recasting is not We are creating, we are, Dana, it comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents. I say that we're creating a story, meaning we're creating the American media focusing on it.

So he seems to incriminate himself. And then when called on it, I said, no, no, I'm creating the media attention around the story. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listen, this is, this is what you get for, you know, moving into the Trump vortex. Trump is in some ways the only person who can really pull it off and that's just by like sheer force of will just like pretending that the lies that he tells are true

over and over again until people just shrug their shoulders or roll their eyes or whatever. It's kind of hard to square this sort of stuff with reality. And you know, you saw Vance right there just trying to figure out the best way to tell this lie to cover up for this lie

and not even trusting his own decision in the immediate aftermath of it. I mean, everybody, including J.D. Vance, knows the story's not real. And I think, I mean, this could kind of go to the whole debate. I think what was sort of most alarming about Trump in almost everything that he said was it really felt like, I think Jake Tapper or somebody on the post show

said it was like a 4chan meme come to life, you know, his whole thing. talk about politicians being in echo chambers. I mean, the dude literally created his own echo chamber. This is, it's not a turn of phrase, right? He built, he may had Trump social made when he got kicked off of Twitter. And that's all the news that he gets, presumably, is from, like, crazy, you know, far right meme accounts on there. And also what he saw on TV, just to, just to be totally clear. I don't doubt that he saw, he saw, he saw a man on TV. Listen, I don't want to impugn the integrity of newsmax.

or O-A-N or whatever without actually having seen it myself, I don't doubt that he saw something that looked like a news story that came from television, but, you know, this is like when your parents think they saw something on the news and it was just a believable Facebook post or whatever, I mean, it's just, you know, we might use it, we might overuse the word alarming, but that's what I would, I mean, I think that's more damning than just about any of the content

of any of the stuff that he said. In cases like this as reporters, the first thing we do is fact check. Then we press somebody like J.D. Vance and say, how could you say this when this is not true? And then we proceed to the second level where we say, wait a second, we've just spent five days talking about the story

that wasn't true. Does this some way help Trump? Is Trump doing this, I don't know if on purpose is the right? phrase to use, but is he doing it in a way to just whip up and distract attention because he lost the debate? Yeah. Or because he doesn't want to talk about issues.

So that by talking about this, even if it is not real, even if to clearly and explicitly debunk it, does this redound to Trump's benefit in some way? I don't know. I don't think you and I are on this, you know, sort of on the team where you say like everything bad that happens to Trump, politically speaking, is actually good for Trump. We don't think that. Or deliberate or a deliberate move. But as we were in like day five, that thought was swirling through my head. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It just feels like, you know, the best thing to happen to Kamala Harris's campaign was the hour and a half of that debate. and any clips, you know, migrating from the hour and a half of that debate.

And even fact-checking, it's somewhere in my head. It's funny. Well, I mean, I think Harris clearly won the debate, but I do see, I mean, listen, I mean, somebody could tell you with a straight face that, like, it doesn't matter if those stories are laughable, that people are making fun of them, that they got caught in a giant lie again. You could tell me with a straight face that as long as people are talking about immigration, then Trump's winning, right? And so, I mean, I don't think Trump's performance was very good even on his own terms,

but it's really hard to rate it in a real way. And I think that, I mean, he doesn't want to do any more debates. You know, part of it's, you know, you might look at that and you say he doesn't want to lose again. He might look at it and say, like, you know, he's probably content to let things. I mean, obviously, you can't be too concerned or he would do another debate and try to win, right? So, I mean, it kind of feels like just like they're both sort of content with where that landed. You know, I mean, Harris, for her part, because she performed well in Trump because, I don't know, he might have thought he did well. Let's talk about no more debates because Kamala Harris was like 10 feet off the podium when her advisor Brian Fallon tweeted, that was fun.

Let's do it again in October. Yeah. Word October is important because J.D. Vance and Tim Walls are going to debate on October 1st. The Harris campaign is saying we want to debate after that. Also saying we do not want to do the proposed Fox News debate that was going to take place at least in its original proposed form tomorrow. That ain't happening. Trump and his team give a couple of different answers about whether they want to debate. And then finally, last Thursday, Trump says in all caps,

true social post, there will be no third debate. He also mused aloud that if he was going to do a Fox News debate, he didn't want Brett Barron and Martha McCallum to be the moderators. He wanted somebody like Sean Hannity or Jesse Waters to be the moderator. Sure. So we're sort of proposing things that have absolutely zero chance of happening here. Yeah. He also made the point about who won.

So Trump did a classic wrestling heel thing. Because you and I know, the professional wrestling explains American politics. We often say that on this podcast. Trump did a classic wrestling heel thing where he came out and said, I won the debate, actually. Yeah.

According to every poll, every single poll, I think. Nate Silver had an interesting tweet where he was talking about, can the media, the media that tries to be somewhat even-handed about these things, just come out and declare that Harris won the debate? it's pretty decisive, right, to any viewer.

Even viewers in Trump's camp. Wait, is he saying that is his argument that they shouldn't be allowed to? More that it's interesting how people process this and talk about this. So this is the Washington Post. Harris keeps Trump on defensive. New York Times. Harris puts Trump on defensive in fierce debate. It was like any debate with Donald Trump, except maybe the Biden one is fierce.

Wall Street Journal, Trump and Harris trade barbs. in fiery debate. Yeah. A lot of only in journalism there. Here's Politico. Harris won the debate long dash and it wasn't close. Yeah. Now, I think that's more revealing about Politico than it is other mainstream organs.

Uh-huh. Because we know Politico, if nothing else, is always trying to cut through. How can we through display or an angle in our otherwise even-handed political story grab you by the lapels? Yeah. It's interesting to see them step out like. that after the debate. Again, it is obvious that Kamala Harris won the debate. That's not, that's not in question. But it's interesting to see how people play it. It is. I mean,

you talked last time about last week about how, you know, with all the parallels between NFL reportage and debate and, you know, political debate reportage now, people are looking for a headline that tells you who won. People are probably looking for headline that tells you that their preferred candidate won. And that's how we self-select or various news organizations but it it does seem

like it does seem just almost like laughably pat right to be like there was a big winner I mean it wasn't a foot race right they both said things and you have to

like quality you have to like go through what they said and you know the winner is it's an amorphous metric right? I mean, the winner is who wins. The winner is who gets the, I mean, even if you want to be real horse racing about it, the winner is like whose poll number is bounced the most, right? I mean, it's, I guess if it's, I think any candidate would, would choose winning an election over winning a scored debate contest, right? I think that's really what matters. I would like to be president more than I would like to win the ABC News debate. That's definitely true. It's just as like the, the, The New York Times Wall Street Journal approach with the trading fiery barbs. That doesn't bother me at all. But that doesn't help you either.

That's the problem. Yeah. It's just, it's almost so neutral that it's useless. Yeah. Like, I guess Harris putting Trump on the defensive, at least characterizes what she was doing and what she was trying to do a little bit

better. Yeah. But you're right. The politico one seems, again, I'm not one of those people, as you know, who goes around Twitter hunting for headlines that bother me

after major news events. Sure. It was just interesting to see the two approaches there. We heard before the debate that Harris's big task was introducing herself or continuing to introduce herself

to voters. She's done pretty well in the polls since Joe Biden dropped out of the race, but polls like the New York Times CNN polls say, hey, voters want to know more about her and more about what she stands for. Yeah.

It's interesting to see how she approached that. Her very first answer, you noted about the economy, it was like, here are some things I want to do. Yeah. Here are some numbers for you. Certainly when she was talking about abortion, here are things I believe in. Here's what I want to do if I'm elected president.

At other time, she was more interested in contrasting herself with Donald Trump. Here's what he wants to do. Here's why you should not elect him. There was a quote in the New York Times. I thought it was such a good point. It was from Senator LaFonsea Butler of California. She's serving as senator until the election, in which Adam Schiff will almost certainly become the next senator from California.

She said this to the Times, I need to know more, is also an expression of some fear and hesitancy about something they've never seen before. It's the first time that a black woman, a woman that has had the life journey that the vice president has had, has been in a position to run for the highest office in the land. And rather than to say, I'm a little hesitant,

maybe a better way, a more thoughtful way to express that is, I might need to know more I don't know enough. Yeah. Such a good and revealing quote. What did you think about the Kamala Harris' former president moment? Should we play that? This was one of the funniest. Yeah, let's play the audio. It's good.

And this former president? I thought it was smart. I mean, listen. You thought it was on purpose? Oh, yeah. You don't think she was just losing her train of thought? No, no. I thought it was deliberate, like, you know,

I thought it was, I mean, maybe I'm crazy. I thought it was very calculated. I thought it was a little bit of a, I don't quite want to call this guy what I'm obligated to call, or at least the first words out of her mouth. She's intended to convey that the first thought that came to her mind

was not former president. Right? See, when I was watching, I thought she was double clutching because she was about to say president. Yeah. First of all, you want to make clear

that he's the former president and then there's his election conspiracy theories you don't want to say president. And so she was just pausing on that word. But you think she was drawing out a pause to keep us on the edge of our season. What is she going to say? Yeah,

maybe I'm crazy. I think I read that as being entirely deliberate. So funny. All right after the debate. Taylor Swift endorses Harris and Walls. Yeah.

And then on Sunday we woke up to Trump declaring on true social I hate Taylor Swift exclamation point. Just an incredibly unnecessary getting it in the mud. I mean, yeah. That was one of those

where everybody who was sharing it had to just repeat the phrase yes, this is real. Yeah. This is not what Donald Trump's opponents wanted to trick you into believing he posted on true social. Yeah. No context.

It just, I hate Taylor Swift. Yeah. A lot of people were understandably focusing on that endorsement. I was more interested in the Colin Coward take, which came out right after the debate on Twitter. Uh-huh. This, I will insist, is also real. Conservative media insisted that Kamala Harris was weak and would be overwhelmed tonight.

That's not what I watched. Yeah. Colin Coward. That's not what I watch is beautiful. Not what I watch. Because you read it in the voice of his, of a bit that he does on his show, don't you? That's not what I watched.

And then the little pregnant pause while we wait for him to tell us what he did watch. That's not what I watched. Maybe Colin Coward's best moment since he defended Taylor Swift. Yep. Speaking of closely scrutinized TV events, David, Tom Brady called his second ever televised game. Dated. The Cowboys getting absolutely walled by the Saints. I'll tell you what, I want to come back to this because in addition to Tom Brady being one of the most famous guys in America doing a job he doesn't have to do.

For me, this is a fascinating way for us all to watch someone learn the craft of announcing in real time. Yes. Totally. And watching him in week two, Saints' first drive, which ended in an Alvin Kamara touchdown, he felt so much more comfortable, so much more present. Yep.

Right from the gun. And the first thought that went through my mind is Tom Brady is a good announcer now. Yeah. Wouldn't have said that during week one, but week two, seven days later, it was like Tom Brady's a good announcer. He's a good announcer. Yeah, I mean, it's a funny thing, man.

My five-year-old had a Capoeira performance yesterday. I don't know if you're familiar with the Brazilian fight dancing art of Capoeira. I am now. You know, it's just one of these silly things the kids do. We've been to a couple classes and now he's out there in like the town square doing a little helping the people who really knew what they're doing. You made him into a busker already? Yeah. Well, I didn't make any money off of it yet.

so we're still working on that part. But anyway, there's like all the people who are in the circle, all the copperer people come out and they do a like a solo. You know, there's a bunch of, there's a, there's a handful little kids. They all did the same little like you do the steps and then you do some kicks and then whatever. Mike could get out there and he like was super concentrating and he started doing the steps

and he just forgot to do anything out. Right? He just did like the, the baseline. And then people kind of waited and applauded, waited, waited, a plotter. The teacher went out there and said, like, do a kick. And he just like kind of looked at his teacher. he was like, okay, just bow, get out of here.

And then he came back and he figured it out, right? The next time he came back, he was like with another kid. They were doing like spin kicks and cartwheels and all kinds of stuff. And it was great. But you get out there the first time and maybe you're a little bit in the headlights, right? You're just like, I got to do the steps. I got to make sure I get these steps right. Everyone's watching.

Wait, how many steps have I done? Wait, how long has I been out here? Wait, am I still, did I do a kid? I don't remember if I've kicked. And then, but the second time, it was just like, oh, we're just here. have fun. Now I get it. That's kind of what Tom Brady did, I feel like. He went out there when he finally figured out it could just be fun. He was great. I thought this was going to be the reason you did not hear Tom Brady call the game in real time. And in fact, it was an elaborate

metaphor for Tom Brady's performance. You're welcome. Yes. Yes. Congratulations. And thank you very much for that. The excitement that we did not see or not see much of in week one was creeping in Tom Brady's voice a lot more. Yeah. Do you notice how he makes noises when the ball is in the air? Oh, yeah. Love that.

The first game, I was like, is that Tom Brady making Romo-like sounds of excitement? By the second game, it was very apparent. There was this play where Dak Prescott, Cowboys, QB is dodging pressure. And after the play, Burkhart turns to Brady's like, you look like you wanted to throw the ball from the booth while that play was going on. Yeah. And he's like, Brandon Cooks was.

open. I just see him. His Brandon Cook's open. Like, yes, yes, that's what we want. Yeah.

That's absolutely what we want. Fox did Brady a favor. They gave him the Cowboys in week one. They gave him the Cowboys in week two. And they gave him the Cowboys in week three when he's playing Brian Waters' hometown Ravens. So he only had to prepare,

or at least prepare a ton for one team in each game. Also, you could feel coming through in week two, the Saints are in the NFC South. He played the Saints twice a year. Yeah. During his career with the Bucks. So he knew a lot about those guys.

He did. That was super helpful. Also, the game just had a lot more big plays than week one, which is good for any announcing. Still a lot more to be unlocked. He is not forced ghost John Madden or forced ghost Howard Gosell. We're anywhere close to that. I still think he can get to the second level more on analysis.

He was there a lot more in this game. Yeah, you saw a little hint of sarcasm from, right? You saw a little hint of, of, you know, it's like being in a new work environment or be at a cocktail party for your wife's job or something. You're just like, oh, you think it's something funny to say it. It's just like, I don't know who I'm talking to here. I don't know how, I don't know how this sarcasm, this irony is going to be going to be received. But when you get comfortable, then, you know, I think, I think Brady's finding that voice, you know, finding hopefully the part that makes him Brady, right?

And I think that can really work for him. That's the Aikman thing. It's like, you know, hey, I'm a nice guy. I want to project as a nice guy. But then I see bad football and that edge comes out. I don't approve of bad football. There was a moment where Cowboys receiver fell down. And Burkart was like, would you go to that?

guy on the next series and Brady's like, no. Yeah, exactly. No, I wouldn't. Yep. Also use the word swaggy during the broadcast. Now, that's not exactly on the frontier of language, but I don't know that Chris Collinsworth has ever used the word swaggy during a broadcast? I wouldn't think so, no. So Tom Brady taking his places, we could only imagine an announcer would take us.

All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds. You sent us your favorite anchorman versus producer moments. Now we're going to play them. 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.

One of the big moments from the Harris-Trump debate was when Trump was asked what his plan was for improving the Affordable Care Act. and he said, David, that he has concepts of a plan. Yeah. Concepts of a plan. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write me explaining to my editor why I missed a deadline. Thanks to Alex Goff and Henry Redmond for that one.

If you accurately quoted what I said to Connor and Evans just the other day, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, a couple of things for you in the notebook dump. I want to induct someone into the whole. Hall of Departed Journalists. I'm constructing right at this very moment. Her name David is Linda Deutsch.

She was an Associated Press court reporter who died earlier this month. Let me tell you something, David. Linda Deutsch was not just a court reporter, but maybe the greatest court reporter of modern times. I'm going to quote from John Rogers' obit in the AP here. Deich's court's career began with the 1969. trial and conviction of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sir Han, Sir Han. She went on to cover a who's who of criminal defendants, and I want you to listen to this list.

Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, Patty Hurst, Phil Spector, the Menendez brothers, the night stalker Richard Ramirez, the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and the police officers charged in the beating of motorist Rodney King. Wow. And we're not done. Quoting again, Deutsch also spent five months in Alaska covering the trial of Joseph Hazelwood,

the captain of the Exxon Valdez. There's a name that was in every monologue on a late night show in that era. She was also at the 1973 espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked to the New York Times, the top secret Pentagon papers. also covered normal non-celebrity trials, fraud, conspiracy, environmental disasters, immigration.

Going back to the open here, Linda Deutsch was just 25 when she covered the conviction of Saron-Zan, Zaron. Then she turned to the bizarre case of Charles Manson. People were having LSD flashbacks in the courtroom and at one point Charlie is leaping across the council table at the judge with a pencil in his hand and the girls are jumping up and down singing, Deutsch recalled, in a 2014 interview. interview. She was a big figure at the OJ trial, which we've revisited in various forms. AP says the judge made Doidge, by then a familiar face around the courthouse, the only reporter to cover jury selection. After Simpson was acquitted, 11 months later, he called to thank her for what he considered fair and objective coverage. OJ was reading the AP. The conversation led to what would be the first of a number of exclusive interviews he gave her over the years.

She was based in L.A., joined the AP in 1967. She covered the Academy Awards in her free time. Linda Deutsch was 80 years old. Farewell to an amazing court reporter. And speaking of Obitz, David, we lost James Earl Jones since we last spoke. We did. He was 93. He was the voice of Darth Vader, Mufasa,

and the voice. of CNN. Yep. How much cultural capital do you think James Earl Jones added to CNN by saying

this is CNN? It's a great question. It's a sort of chicken and the egg thing. I don't know who needed the other one more, but it certainly

it certainly worked for them. Right? I mean, it's that, it's that, that gravitas. It's the, no,

no, this is a real documentary feel that you get when you turn when you're flipping for something to watch on one of your streaming platforms. Yeah, it was, I mean,

it's hard to imagine someone whose voice defined a generation more than him between that and Darth Vader and, you know, whatever assorted, like, car commercials you were familiar with during his early days. It was, I mean, even as an actor, you know,

he was always, it felt like, just sort of like a stage actor on screen, right? that it was always about the voice, about the vocal performance, you know? He was just such an icon, man. Just like his voice was everything. Think about the trajectory of CNN, we always talk about on this podcast

as being brand X of news. Yeah. Battled in somewhat tarnished brand X of news. But CNN in the 80s was the cable news network that did not have the gravitas of network news. We want to be

on the same level as ABC and NBC and CBS and CBS. And we are we are disparaged because we're cable. We're chicken noodle news as they used to be called. So we're going to try to win over America by one just being on all the time.

Yeah. So you don't have to wait for the evening news or nightline. But I think James Earl Jones doing the narration in whatever small way, is part of it, gaining that gravitas.

Yeah, I think you're right. Being on the same level. By the way, famous role for James Earl Jones, Terrence Mann and Field of Dreams. I was just thinking about it, yeah. The novelist who had stopped writing. What a mind blow it was for

younger Brian Curtis to then pick up the book, Shulis Joe, and realize that in the novel, the novelist is actually J.D. Salinger? Yeah. what it's not terence man the cool guy from the movie no rides across the country with kevin costner in a van huh that was strange

finally david tv host versus tv producer yeah last week we played some audio from shannon sharp talking to his producer mm-hmm turned out to be a distant second in terms of shannon sharp stories last week oh We asked listeners, I said, do you have other favorite examples of on-air people having a meltdown? Yeah. We got a couple of good ones. This is from Bob Warburton and Eric Stephen. They sent along audio of the legendary top 40 DJ Casey Kasen.

Oh, I remember this one. Go play it. So a listener had asked for a dedication and Kasem found that it did not perfectly match the last song he had played. We're up to our long distance dedication. And this one is about kids and pets and a situation that we can all understand, whether we have kids or pets or neither. It's from a man in Cincinnati, Ohio, and here's what he writes. Dear Casey, this may seem to be a strange dedication request, but I'm quite sincere, and it'll need a lot if you play it. Recently, there was a death in our family.

He was a little dog named Snuggles, but he was most certainly a part of... Let's come to start again. Him coming out of the record. Play the record, okay? please see when you come out of those uptempo god damn numbers man it's impossible to make those transitions and then you got to go into somebody dying you know they do this to me all the time i don't know what the hell they do it for but god damn it if we can't come out of a slow record i don't understand it i don't know what i love more about that the familiar voice of casey casem

yeah shaggy and a big somebody that everybody could imitate just on command a couple of decades ago to the fact that the dog was named Snuggles. That was why he was so upset. The second one comes from listener Charlie Ban. I'll just set this up, David. It's not a producer versus anchor battle, but anchor versus reporter in the field. The former is Jim Ryan,

anchor at Fox 5 in New York. The latter is Dick Oliver, Fox 5 reporter. Dick Oliver was at an apartment building in New York and there was a broken elevator. So he was interviewing in the hallway both the aggrieved tenant and the landlord

going from one to the other. Tenant was like, why isn't this fixed? And the landlord was like, ah, we don't make the schedule. Dada, da, da, da. So back in the studio, Jim Ryan was not satisfied with Dick Oliver's questions. And listen to how personal and anchor manny

this thing. Do she have a response to that? Is she still there? What's that? Did the lady just leave? Yeah. Oh, that's too bad. I should have kept that discussion. She's back if you want her. Yes. She heard you. Yes. What'd you like to know? I would like to know a response to what the gentleman said. The gentleman's a very effective spokesperson for the, for the company, but obviously the people who live there are not satisfied with his explanation. Right. So what do you want now? Well, if I have to teach you how to be a reporter, Ali, I'll do that later. Why don't you do that later, Jim?

I think the lady expressed herself, and you're not here, you're there. Is there any question you'd like me to ask her? No, I'll give you lessons on how to become a reporter. I'll give you some lessons in how to be an editor because I was your boss once. Yeah, you were and are no longer. How did that happen? Well, I don't know, Jim Miller. That was not a deleted scene from Anchorman.

That was a confrontation between Dick Oliver and Jim Ryan. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained-pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about a sinkhole in Ohio was Holy Toledo. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener, David Reed. It's from The Guardian. David, I know you're familiar with Hulk Hogan Beer, which is perhaps briskly selling at a 7-Eleven near you. Will Dolly Parton, a public figure who perhaps has a better positive negative rating, did not want to be outdone. And Dolly Parton has given us Prosecco and Rose.

Dolly Parton is a vintner now. What was the Guardian's strained pun headline? Prosecco or rosé, so she's making... Working wine to five? Drinking wine to five was the... Okay. But wine to five is the pun we're looking for. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Bracks and Magic. by Brian Waters. Coming up Thursday on the press box, Sean Fennessee. We're going to do a little just my opinion and then rank best campaign movies. I want you to know, David, I just watched the Manchurian Canada

for the first time since we watched it in John Templin's class. Yeah. In high school. Boy, what a bad shit movie that was. I think we saw the John of the Demi remake together, but had not watched the original in a really, really long time.

Yeah. About to go watch Bob Roberts after we hang up. Sean Fennessey's Thursday, then Monday, Shoemaker and I return with more lukewarm takes about the media. I'm going to teach you how to be a reporter. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.