Fox News statement: “While Fox News was unaware of Sean Hannity’s informal relationship with Michael Cohen and was surprised by the announcement in court yesterday, we have reviewed the matter and spoken to Sean and he continues to have our full support.”
The former First Lady passes at the age of 92. Barbara Bush met her husband at a dance in Greenwich, Conn., when she was 16 and it was love at first sight. They married when he was home on leave as an aviator in World War II and later this debutante from Westchester County would move with him out to the oil fields of Odessa (if you’ve ever seen the film Giant, it was not unlike that).
She was the only woman besides Abigail Adams to both be married to and give birth to a U.S. president. The only question we have is will the current president attend her funeral? Will he be welcome? Not that it’s related, but look at the date on the official White House letter of condolence.
2. Pelican West
“NOLA, N-N-N-Nola!”
LOB City has relocated from L.A. to La., as the New Orleans Pelicans have redefined the art of the alley oop. Anthony Davis, a.k.a. The Unibrow, averaged 28.5 points and 13.5 boards in Pelicans’ two road wins at Portland, including last night. If New Orleans advances to the next round, it likely gets Golden State, which should be fun.
3. Wanted: Dead Or Alive
Yesterday a sketch artist released a drawing of the man who allegedly threatened Stormy Daniels in a Las Vegas parking lot a few years back. Eagle-eyed and intrepid reporters here at the MH newsroom are the first to identify the assailant:
4. Air Scare
Southwest Airlines flight 1380 was 20 minutes into its journey from LaGuardia to DFW when an engine on the left wing blew and sent shrapnel back toward the fuselage. One window blew and, at an altitude of 32,500 feet, the woman seated against that window was nearly pushed out (Well, Actually Guy moment: you are pushed out of a plane as the air pressure inside is greater than outside; the air is rushing OUT of the plane, so you are not being sucked out). Anyway, passengers helped keep her from being pushed out, but she did not survive.
The plane landed safely in Philadelphia, but she becomes the first fatality on a domestic commercial flight in nine years.
5. Money Can’t Buy Me Glove
German billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub went missing in the Swiss Alps a week ago and is presumed dead. Haub, 58, CEO of the Tengelmann retail empire in Europe, was in training for a Swiss ski mountaineering race, the Patrouille, that took place yesterday. He took a cable car, the highest-altitude cable car in Europe, up Klein Matterhorn, 12,740 feet. Haub got out of the cable car with his skis and a day pack. Weather deteriorated and he has not been seen since.
Music 101
Smile A Little Smile For Me
Some day I’d like to do a mixtape titled “Songs From The Back Of The Station Wagon,” which would be a compilation of golden late-Sixties/early-Seventies tunes that are branded into my memory from family car trips: They’d include “Good Morning, Starshine,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Never My Love,” “Both Sides Now,” “Georgy Girl,” “Carrie Anne” and this 1969 tune from hit from the British pop group The Flying Machine. It rose to No. 5.
Remote Patrol
Casablanca
8 p.m. TCM
The best movie of them all. If you haven’t yet seen it, do yourself a favor and come join the grownups’ table. And if you’re a virgin, pay attention to the letters of transit. They matter. Here’s looking at you, kid.
Manchester United at AFC Bournemouth
2:45 p.m. NBC Sports
A midweek matinee Premier League delight. Why? This is basically McDonald’s versus Gray’s Papaya. The Cherries are the tiniest major pro sports franchise we know of, located in a lovely tourist locale on England’s southern coast. Man United owns 13 Premier League championships, more than twice the number of the next-most successful club. Bournemouth was two leagues below the Premier League just a decade ago but now, in their third season in the Premier League, are firmly ensconced in the middle of the pack—no danger of relegation. And you’ll see them play in charming, cozy Dean Court, which seats all of 11,360 supporters. Go, Cherries!
*The judges will half-heartedly accept “American Woman”
In a driving rain storm, Chula Vista, Calif., native and Arizona State alumna Des Linden becomes the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon in 33 years while running the slowest winning time (above) in 40 years. The larger story may be that seven of the top ten female finishers were American and six of the top ten male finishers were also American.
2018 Boston Marathon: Wild, Wild Wet
And none of those six American men were Galen Rupp, who dropped out.
Only one African female one African male finished in the top ten (the winning male was Yuki Kawauchi of Japan, who won his first marathon). Was American fleetness of foot and African languor simply a matter of wet, wind and chills? Or is there something else happening? Consider that with Shalane Flanagan’s NYC Marathon victory last November (she finished 7th yesterday), that this is the first year since 1977-78 that American women were the reigning champs of both the NYC and Boston marathons. We don’t think Africans , women and men, suddenly forgot how to run far fast.
2. The Cohen Brothers
So let’s assess the three full clients of Michael Cohen, alumnus of Goombah State University Law School: 1) Donald Trump, a man for whom Cohen says he spent $130,000 of his own cash to pay off a porn star not to speak about a sexual encounter that his own client says never occurred (rrrrrriiiiiiight), 2) Elliott Broidy, a Holmby Hills/Bel Air Republican fat cat who lived within a mile or so of the Playboy Mansion and probably accidentally impregnated a Playmate and paid her off to the tune of $1.6 million. At least he copped to it.
So, sex, sex, and behind Door No. 3? SEAN HANNITY! Now, Hannity’s reason to be Cohen’s client may not be shenanigans-related (he has been married 25 years), but one asks oneself, Since Sean Hannity earns $36 million a year, can he not do better for a lawyer than Michael Cohen?
Well, of course he can, if it’s legal advice he needs. Nope, the reason Michael Cohen’s attorney named Hannity as a client is likely because he knows there is a tape or document of a conversation or some deal between Hannity and Cohen to which he does not wish the Feds have access. He’s hoping to use attorney-client privilege to shield himself and Hannity from any conversations or deals between Hannity and Trump for which Cohen has been a conduit.
By week’s end Fox News is going to have to decide whether it is in the honest news-gathering-and-disseminating business or in the Sean Hannity-and-propaganda business. Most of us already know the answer, but this is Rupert Murdoch’s last chance to retain plausible deniability. If Fox News retains its star anchor, who kept reporting on Cohen for weeks and assailing any attacks on Cohen while failing to disclose he was Cohen’s client, then they’ve forfeited any right to refer to themselves as an honest news organization.
Lastly, Stormy lawyer Michael Avenatti, who logs more minutes on MSNBC now than Joe and Mika, made a strong point last night: when push comes to shove, Michael Cohen is going to remember that after all he did to help get Trump elected (a trip to Prague, perhaps?), Trump did not bring him along to Washington, D.C., to be part of the team. He wasn’t respectable enough, in Trump’s eyes, to be any part of his Worst Wing team. And so Cohen’s wife and close friends are going to implore him to flip using the logic, rightly, that Trump was not loyal to you when it mattered; so why would you throw away the rest of your life for him.
3. Blame It On Carlos Danger!
We don’t know where the Age of Trump ends. Impeachment? A defeat in 2020? Jail? War? But let’s assume it gets really, really bad, or really, really dark or even nuclear…let’s never forget where it began: with Anthony Wiener sending naughty selfies to teenage girls!
That’s right (far right!), America! Like something out of a comically dystopian novel, the greatest democracy the world has ever known has become endangered thanks to Carlos Danger. As this week’s James Comey apology tour reminds us, Donald Trump was behind 12 points in the polls to Hillary Clinton before Comey made his October 28 announcement. And the reasoning behind that announcement was a slew of newly found Anthony Wiener emails related to Hillary, emails that would never have been uncovered if the FBI had not been investigating Wiener’s gross predilection for going online and trying to hook up with minors by sending shirtless selfies to them.
Life’s funny, eh?
4. DiDi Did It Again!
In a 12-1 rout of the Miami Marlins, New York Yankee shortstop Didi Gregorius goes yard twice in one game for the second time already this season (both times were in Yankee Stadium against teams from Florida, by the way). The Bombers’ lineup includes last year’s home run leaders in both the American League (Aaron Judge) and National League (Giancarlo Stanton), so of course Gregorius leads them in home runs with five.
Didi, who inherited the shortstop spot from FAVORITE YANKEE Derek Jeter, is second in the American League in both home runs and RBI (15). It’s waaaaaaaay early, but keep this in mind: Derek Jeter never won an MVP award. Wouldn’t it be wild if Didi did?
5. “Dad, Why Do We Have To Pay That Cable Bill?”*
Netflix king Reed Hastings, right, and Mark Zuckerberg, left
*CNBC’s Jim Cramer, assessing how millennials treat cable versus streaming
Netflix stock continues to soar. Yesterday the streaming service announced its quarterly earnings after the bell, and we stopped binge-watching Broadchurch just long enough to turn on CNBC and learn that they’d added 2 million new domestic subscribers just this year.
Competitors (Amazon, Hulu, Disney) will come along in this space, but Netflix was first to market, Netflix is more aggressive in finding new programming and serving its customers’ needs, and Netflix has been confounding the naysayers for nearly a decade now since it went public. Its stock will be up roughly 7% at the opening bell in a few minutes.
2000: Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for $50M
Five years ago today, Netflix stock was $30. Today it is going to open at $330 or so, an ELEVEN TIMES gain.
The last remaining question, for many of us, is when will Netflix begin streaming live sporting events and perhaps a BBC-style live news network? As soon as that happens, cable is dead. It’s going to die, anyway. It was a nice run, cable. But what streaming offers us is the chance to watch a show when WE decide, not you, and also the chance to overindulge on those shows. Cable cannot compete with that.
Music 101
Gimme Some Water
This tune off Eddie Money‘s second album, Life For The Taking, never charted, but we always liked it. Eddie Money and Billy Joel, two Long Island boys, were both pretty big deals in the late Seventies.
Remote Patrol
Bucks at Celtics, Game 2
8 p.m. TNT
You have to love how Brad Stevens is pulling a MacGyver with the Celtics roster (no Kyrie, no Hayward) and Boston still pulled out Game 1. Giannis (must we really spell out his last name? Do you know any other dudes named Giannis?) is a super stud, even if the refs let him travel all night long and on Sunday got away with seven fouls.
In the same New York City court room this morning, at a hearing presided over by the Honorable Kimba Wood (for whom the NBA’s Adam Silver once clerked), both Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels will appear. Cohen was ordered to appear appear as his lawyers try to hold off prosecutors from reviewing documents and other materials seized last week in raids on his home, office and hotel room.
Coincidentally, it is the stormiest morning of the year in New York City. A hard rain is not only gonna fall, it is falling. Same deal in Boston, where marathoners are about to take off:
Not for nothing, but these are the best NBA uniforms we’ve seen in awhile
The Indiana Pacers strutted into Quicken Loans Arena, took a 20-point first quarter lead, and gave LeBron James and the Cavs their first first-round defeat in 21 games. LeBron has never lost a first-round series: 12 of them. The Pacers were simply the (far) superior team, as the NBA’s Most Improved Player, Victor Oladipo, finished with 32 points. It’s just one game, but the Pacers will win this series. The Cavs, as we wrote last summer, should never have traded Kyrie Irving.
Other first-game first-round highlights: James Harden scores 44 as the Rockets rout Minnesota….Anthony Davis scores 35 and 14 as the Pelicans win in Portland…Kris Middleton hits a 35-footer to force overtime for the Bucks in Boston, but the Celtics win in the extra period…Paul George got sick of hearing how the Pacers fleeced the Thunder in last summer’s trade and scored 36 for his Thunder buddies in a win…
3. Philadelphia Freedom
Not the greatest weekend for racial relations in the U.S. In Philly, at least half a dozen cops were called in to arrest and handcuff two black men who were seated there but had not purchased anything (they were waiting for a friend to arrive). Welcome, by the way, to every Starbucks in Manhattan.
As a nearly daily Starbucks customer, I sympathize with the company on these (coffee) grounds: people should not be allowed to loiter there or simply to use their bathrooms without paying for anything and if you don’t agree, then you’ve never had to enter a bathroom that a homeless man just used as his Air BnB. I mean, c’mon: buy a $3 cup of coffee and linger as long as you like. Go to town in the W.C. If you don’t do that, they should be fine to kick you out. The problem is when you call in half a precinct to do so and they cuff you. I guess, given the climate, these two men may feel fortunate they weren’t shot.
Worse, much worse, was the incident in Detroit in which a 14 year-old black boy, Brennan Walker, missed a bus, went to a nearby home to ask directions to his high school, and was shot at by the homeowner, retired firefighter Jeffrey Ziegler, 53.
A few weird facts of this case: Walker woke up late and missed the bus to school. His mom works and his dad is DEPLOYED IN SYRIA WITH THE U.S. ARMY. When Brennan knocked on the door, Ziegler’s wife answered and yelled (this is on tape), “Whey did these people choose my house?” Ziegler than came downstairs with a shotgun and fired at Walker as he ran away; only the fact that he forgot to turn off the safety kept Walker from becoming a hashtag.
Walker, left; Ziegler, right.
It’s completely disturbing, and most disturbing, that the initial thought of this homeowner is to shoot at a human being as if he’s a raccoon getting into the garbage before he knows a single fact. Less disturbing, and yet I feel I should mention it, is that Brennan was asking for directions because his mother had taken away his smart phone and he had no idea how to get to school without it. It’s April! Are we so reliant on technology that after eight months of attending school we don’t know how to get their on our own unless we stare at a screen.
I know, small potatoes by comparison. But I think I’ll be the only one who mentions this.
4. Nack For Writing
We lost an SI legend this weekend: William “Bill” Nack. Not only was Nack, who passed at the age of 77, one of the five best writers ever to have a byline at SI, but he was a wonderful and unique character, a charmer and a man without airs. There are so many Nack stories, but some of my better memories happened once one of my best friends ever at SI, Mark Beech, and Bill became close friends.
Despite a 30-year difference in ages, Bill and Mark bonded because Mark was his reporter on the horse racing beat and genuinely loved the sport and Mark was a West Point alum while Bill had served in Vietnam. They had markedly different personalities, and Bill was a rock star at the mag while Mark was just starting out, but that never kept Bill from sleeping on Mark’s couch in his one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen when he came to town.
Before long it was like an episode of The Odd Couple but it was hilarious to watch Mark go from the awe of thinking Bill Nack was his friend to the “aw” of Nack is crashing at my apartment again. But that was Bill; it never seemed odd to him and we all just loved having him around when we’d head over to The Emerald Inn, where he would invariably, at some point in the evening, recite the final page of The Great Gatsby.
Bill was a true romantic, a lover and a fighter, and no one at SI ever spilled more blood, sweat and tears for his prose. He will be greatly missed, but all of us, every single one, are so glad that we knew him.
Read these two stories to get a feel for who Bill was, how he wrote: Pure Heart,
on the death of Secretariat and one man’s coming to grips with getting old; and A Name On The Wall, on Bob Kalsu, the only U.S. pro athlete to die in Vietnam.
5. Hell’s Angels
Last Saturday night we were flipping through TCM (because no one rocks the way we do) and a 930 film titled Hell’s Angelswas on. We’d never seen it, but wanted to learn more. The film was directed by Howard Hughes (yes, the future eccentric billionaire) and while part of this World War I epic is about two English brothers being in love with the same woman (Jean Harlow, in her film debut; she’s just 18), what completely stands out….
…is an aerial battle between British planes and a German zeppelin that was decades ahead of its time. Really. It’s Michael Bay-worthy. James Whale, who would go on to direct Frankenstein, directed the non-action sequences but Hughes, using the skies above Van Nuys, Calif., directed the epic dogfight using 137 different aviators. Four men died making this film and Hughes, who directed the action sequences by flying overhead and providing direction by radio, nearly did when his own plane crashed.
It’s a sappy love story. But it’s a far-ahead-of-its-time action film, the type from which current films such as Dunkirk owe a great debt. I’ve provided as much as the action sequence as YouTube would allow above. Enjoy.
Music 101
Walking On A Thin Line
In his remarks before this performance, Huey Lewis (and the News) remind their fans that this 1984 song is about the Americans who crossed the Pacific in service to their nation in the Sixties and early Seventies. The fifth and final single from the monster 1983 album, Sports, it hit No. 18 on the Billboard charts.
Remote Patrol
Heat at Sixers, Game 2
8 p.m. TNT
Spurs at Warriors, Game 2
10:30 p.m. TNT
This Aussie rules
The pleasant surprise over the weekend is how quickly the next generation (Ben Simmons, Anthony Davis, Giannis, Victor Oladipo) put their imprimaturs on the playoffs. But the Dubs are still the Dubs, even without Stephen Curry.
*The judges will also accept, “Comey At Me, Bro!” and “Pee: Did He?”
James Comey‘s tell-all, A Higher Loyalty, will not be out until Tuesday, but you know how it is with leaks during the Trump defenestration administration. You’ve likely heard by now that the first two times Comey was alone with Trump, the president-elect doth protested too much about the Moscow Golden Showers tape. And he asked Comey to investigate it out of concern for his wife, which is an odd thing to request if the event in question, at which you are the center, never actually happened.
We liked this review of the book inThe New York Times, because as the author noted, Comey is a chronically conscientious do-gooder whose zealousness in doing good not only likely steered the election in favor of Trump but also left him as a man whom both former candidates, Trump and Hillary Clinton, despise.
Rule No. 6: No good deed goes unpunished.
You may want to read this: What if Amazon were to “accidentally” ship cases and cases of A Higher Loyalty to the White House?
2. Rich Man, Doorman
That’s Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at Trump World Tower. He did a fantastic impersonation of Bobby Moynihan’s “Second-Hand News Guy,” claiming he’d heard Donald Trump had had an affair with a housekeeper and fathered a love child but that he ought not to criticize the housekeeper.
Then the National Enquirer got interested. They had him take a lie-detector test, he passed, and then they paid him $30,000 for the rights to the story “in perpetuity.” Then they sat on it. NE publisher David Pecker, who paid five times as much to bury the Karen McDougall story with Trump, is a pal of the president’s.
Artist’s rendition of Dino, wondering if he should spill what he knows…
Is Dino lying? His ex-wife, a personal trainer in Brooklyn, says that he is a “pathological liar” (where have we heard that term before and to whom was it attributed?). We have no idea if the story is true, but it is interesting that Pecker phoned Michael Cohen about it before the $30,000 hush money was paid.
Dino’s ex-wife.
And we almost forgot: The Washington Post is reporting that some Trump officials are fretting that Michael Cohen taped many of his phone conversations, which would now be in the possession of the U.S. Attorney’s office, Southern District of New York, which would be the most colossal and inept maneuver since the dudes who broke into the Watergate leaving the door open, which alerted the guard (Honestly, is there a greater oxymoron than “criminal mastermind?”).
“Which tapes?” “All of them.” “Oh.”
Today’s episode of The Worst Wing is, frankly, overflowing with salaciousness.
3. Brokeneck Pace
This is Tim Don, one of the world’s premier triathletes. Last May in Brazil the then 39 year-old Brit set the world record in the Ironman with an astounding time of 7:40:23. He broke the existing record by four minutes. Officially, he finished his 2.4-mile swim in 44:15, his 112-mile bike in 4:06:56, and his 26.2-mile marathon in 2:44:46.
Five months later, while on a training ride in Colorado, he was struck by a car and fractured the C-2 vertebrae in his neck (the hangman’s fracture, because that’s the vertebrae that snaps). Fortunately, Don survived and he chose to wear a halo (above) for his recovery, ruling out surgery, because that would have limited the range of motion in his neck and ended his athletic career.
He wore the halo for four months. This Monday he’s going to run the Boston Marathon (halo removed) and hopes to finish in 2:50. He truly is an Ironman. Terrific story in The New York Times.
4. Blacks’ Law Dictionary
*The judges acknowledge that this hed makes little sense; we just wanted to…
That’s Ieshia Charles, a single mother of five from Houston. But don’t you fret, MAGA-land. She’s not on food stamps and he hand is not out. Charles dropped out of high school to have her first child. Then, in 2009, she lost her job, she lost her home to a fire, and she lost her husband to an illness (she should be suing the producers of This Is Us for pilfering her life story).
Charles thought about committing suicide, but then she got right with God. And even though she had grown up herself homeless (mom on drugs, dad deceased), she had always wanted to be a lawyer. So her pastor urged her to get her GED. She did. Then college. Check. Now she’s about to graduate from Thurgood Marshall Law School and we’re just wondering when Octavia Spencer will sign on for the role (or is Tiffany Hadish or Kerry Washington going to pursue the part).
Never give up, kids. Never. Give. Up.
5. Move Over, Osmonds
There’s a new most talented singing Mormon family from Utah, and it’s the LeBaron clan. This, inspired by their mom’s request for a song as a Mother’s Day gift, is tremendous. They claim they only rehearsed it a few times before putting this on tape. The LeBarons, five kids and their spouses (dad’s in the background, too), recorded it on Easter Sunday.
Music 101
Just Between You And Me
We’re going to go out on short ledge, or ice floe, and declare April Wine as the hardest rocking band from Nova Scotia. This 1981 power ballad hit No. 21 on the Billboard charts.
Remote Patrol
You Magnificent Beast
Netflix
Greg Davies may be the world’s tallest comedian (6’8″). Or at least he’s England’s tallest comedian. He’s cheeky. You’ll like.
*** MH staff sends out a special thank you to Cory, Kurt and Jeff. Much appreciated!
In Oklahoma City’s 82nd and final regular season game, Russell Westbrook grabs 20 rebounds to give him a season average of 10.1 boards per game, which in turn gave him a second consecutive season of averaging a triple double (something no one had done since Oscar Robertson in 1963). For the record Westbrook finishes with averages of 25.4 points, a league-high 10.3 assists, and 10.1 boards per game.
Oddly enough, last night Russ grabbed 20 boards, dished out 19 assists, and yet scored just 6 points (was that part of a deal he made with his Thunder buddies?). He becomes the first player in NBA history to average a triple-double over a season twice.
The Thunder will face the Utah Jazz in Round 1.
2. Take Your Paul And Go Home
Yeah, he’s done enough…
House majority leader and eternally 30 year-old looking-guy-sporting-a-benign-grin Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) announces that, now that he’s helped install a kakistocrat in the White House and ensure that the federal budget will ballon beyond $20 trillion deficit (it was actually ELIMINATED during the Clinton presidency), he will not seek reelection this autumn.
Ryan is one of as many as 40 Republican congressman who will not seek reelection this year. The Elephants have a majority (238 to 193) in the 435 member House of Representatives, but a swing of 24 seats would change that.
Ryan: “What I know is if I’m here for one more term, my kids will only know me as a weekend dad. I simply can’t have that.”
What I know: If Ryan’s there in November and beyond, there’s a strong chance he and his fellow Republicans in the House would have to vote on the impeachment of a president with overwhelming evidence to support it. In that case their votes would either cast them as pariahs with hardcore MAGA types or, by their refusal to impeach, be permanent stains on them in American history. So they’re going to run…away.
Paul Ryan, who once aspired to advance the vision of conservative icon Jack Kemp, will leave Washington carrying a more tarnished legacy—as the most important enabler of Donald Trump. No one in the GOP was better equipped, by position and disposition alike, to resist Trump’s racially infused, insular nationalism, or to define a more inclusive competing vision for the party. Instead, Ryan chose to tolerate both Trump’s personal excesses and his racially polarizing words and deeds as the price worth paying to advance Ryan’s own top priorities: cutting spending; regulations; and above all, taxes. The result was that Ryan, more than any other prominent Republican, personified the devil’s bargain the GOP has signed with Trump.
History will remember Paul Ryan as a boyishly handsome coward. As it should.
3. Meme Streets
The Orange County Choppers meme has been all over your Twitter feed the past fortnight, and like us you may be wondering where it all sprang from. Here’s the explanation.
4. M.I.T. Aphrodite
Brad Pitt noticed his buddy George Clooney was happy with his accomplished Middle Eastern wife, and now he’s somewhat following suit. Meet Israeli native Neri Oxman, 42, an MIT professor of architecture and design who is also an acclaimed artist.
We get what they were trying to do here, but don’t aesthetics matter?
Pitt and Oxman have reportedly been an item since last autumn and maybe Oxman, as an acclaimed architect, will be able to explain to Pitt why MIT has the ugliest buildings of any campus in America.
5. SI’s Boswell Takes Another Look
This former Sports Illustrated staffer enjoyed the fathoms-deep dive Michael McCambridge took on the current and future state of the magazine in The Ringer. As someone who’s about five years younger than McCambridge, who in 1997 wrote the definitive history of the magazine, The Franchise, I completely got where he was coming from in terms of recalling how disappointed you were as a kid if your SI did not arrive in the mail by Friday afternoon (the Swimsuit issue never did, because my mailman was taking it home for himself for a day….Ew!).
McCambridge—who did not contact me—asked the essential question: Is SI‘s demise a product of the internet or of its own making and of course the answer is BOTH. Besides the advent of ESPN (which, as McCambridge points out, SI had the chance to purchase in 1984 but passed on), the web was absolutely destined to cut into SI‘s influence and hence, profitability.
Above that, though, here’s some notable errors the magazine made: 1) Editors: Before the mid-Eighties, all editors were former staff writers; this situation created more of a bond between the two camps, as editors understood and appreciated the job that writers performed (and the hardships of travel). At a certain point, however, that practice ended, which created an unnecessary animosity between some editors and writers, almost a tug-of-war of egos. I could name a person or two here, but it’s not necessary and the people who were there in the Nineties would know to whom I’m referring, but some of these guys were simply so caustic and, let’s face it, unhappy, that they drove talented writers away. As one inveterate senior writer told me a long, long time ago, back when SI was still THE major player in sports media, “SI is a great place to work, but it could be so much better and it wouldn’t be hard to improve.”
2) Continuity: SI has always hired some established writers from afar (e.g., Dan Jenkins, Rick Reilly) but what happened while I was there is what happens in too many corporate spaces: the people who are classic middle men, who conform to the norm as opposed to shaking things up a bit, are the ones who survive and advance. And so what you get is something not unlike what’s happening in the West Wing right now: a team of cronies. There are still terrific and dedicated people at SI; the shame is some of the people who were let go and made an exodus on their own (and I recognize how self-serving this graf may sound, but I’m talking about other people besides myself) are not around. SI could use their talents and, more important, their spirit.
3) It’s The Writing, Stupid: SI still has some outstanding writers, one of whom is Alan Shipnuck, whose piece on Patrick Reed and his estrangement from his family following his win at Sunday’s Masters was the type of story the magazine used to regularly plumb from the depths. What I don’t see, and what used to be par for the course at the mag when I was there, is something found directly in the word “writing,” and that is WIT.
As a boy and then a teen and then a college student, I could appreciate the bonus pieces by Frank Deford or William Nack, but there was also, in every issue, a story or two that illustrated, in a humorous way, the human condition. Purveyors of such prose were Dan Jenkins, Rick Reilly, Roy Blount, Jack McCallum, Curry Kirkpatrick, etc. During my era Steve Rushin, who still writes for the magazine on a semi-regular basis, took this form to an unprecedented level.
But where are these writers today? How often does anyone quote a line from SI today? And while this returns to No. 2, it’s a shame that there are so many fantastic SI alums out there, many still in their prime, who if the leadership atop the masthead had been different, might still be there today: Sally Jenkins, Jeff Pearlman, Tim Crothers, Jeff MacGregor, to name four.
Granted, some of the most talented writers wanted to get on with their (family) lives and decided to veer out of the express lane and the madness of missed connections, or four days South Bend, etc. Top-tier scribblers such as Alexander Wolff and Rushin still contribute to the magazine, but not as frequently. These are more than simply writers: they are voices, smarter and more insightful than anyone whoring themselves out on Around The Horn, etc., with whom a generation of sports fans are unfamiliar (“Where have you gone, Richard Hoffer/A nation turns its lonely eyes to you“).
Peter King is the most trenchant—and popular—voice at SI these days, and by all consent an absolutely wonderful guy. But he was always a fantastic cook, not a Michelin chef. Every editor knew that. Where are the top chefs on the masthead today? And finally…
4) Chris Stone: The managing editor, who has spent his entire career at SI, is mentioned in McCambridge’s article. When one staffer described him as “heroic,” I not only threw up in my mouth but out the other end. I nodded when McCambridge wrote that SI’s mission was “uncertain” and that what it needed was “a visionary.” The problems he was describing with SI are the character flaws of its leader: someone with a glossy cover who at heart doesn’t really know who he is. Someone who when I worked directly under him found his best ideas by picking up other brands at the newsstands and simply “borrowing” their most innovative concepts.
From McCambridge’s piece: “[Stone’s] so relentlessly positive,” says one friend. “He’s the one who’ll say, ‘I think we’re going to be OK after this round of layoffs.’ Or, ‘It’s going to be better for us if we go to twice a month.’”
Relentlessly positive? I know a few ex-writers, heroes of mine, who’d read that quote and substitute “full of bullshit” for “relentlessly positive.” And when you work at a journalistic publication, at least as a writer, what you crave is truth and candor. Not “relentlessly positive.” So what if your boss tells you how great things are going to be? What’s the truth? Do sunny statements such as the one above (similar to pronouncements I heard when I worked for him from 2003-2006) assuage the reality when the layoffs come—and they do come—and you realize someone who never wrote more than a couple stories for the magazine and whose most formidable talent has been his ability to schmooze with the boys on the publishing side is deciding staffers’ fates?
No one at SI could have prevented the deterioration of its influence over the last two decades, because the 80-foot wave that is the web came along and SI started paddling too late. And even if it had been among the first to ride that wave, the magazine was never going to be as influential. What afflicts SI, what afflicts every magazine, and what those of us old enough to remember will affirm, is that once upon a time holding a magazine in your hands provided even more satisfaction than holding a smart phone does today. A magazine was truly a thing of value (“Can I read that when you’re done?). No longer, alas.
That’s an evolution that no managing editor could have prevented. But at the top, SI could have been in better hands the past decade. Only this week I was having lunch with another former SI staffer and we were talking about SI‘s future. We hope it survives. We hope there is an angel investor out there, a baseball-and-buckets billionaire Bezos, who recalls fondly the impact SI had on him or her as a youth and gives it the mandate, and the bucks, to operate to the best of its ability. To return, as a print publication at least, to providing the most provocative and incredible photographs to accompany the most delectable prose you’ll find in anything held together by staples (or Staples).
It’s possible. Will it happen? We’ll see.
Music 101
Home By The Sea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKN-vsDAlbU
For as commercially successful as Genesis and later Phil Collins were—more than 150 million albums sold—this 1983 song never earned its due (“Turn It On Again” is our favorite post-Gabriel Genesis tune) and never charted as a single. Listen closely to the lyrics: it’s the tale of a burglar who breaks into a home only to discover that it is haunted; the ghosts capture him and force him to listen to their stories (“as we relive our lives in what we tell you…”).
Remote Patrol
Around The World In 80 Days
10 p.m. TCM
1956: A year that gave us epic films such as Giant, The Ten Commandments and The Searchers, the last of which was not even nominated for Best Picture. But this film, starring David Niven and based on the Jules Verne novel, took home the Oscar. Five years after this film was released, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin would go around the world in less than one day.
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