Media Monday: Ballmer’s Billion-Dollar Beef & Wintour’s Galliano Gaffe

[MUSIC] Balmer is fighting back, right? Like, I don't think this is done yet at all, and I don't think this is law fair, right? I don't think, and I'm not on anyone's side here, right? Care less about their clippers. [MUSIC] Welcome to the Powers the Bee Daily, Pucks Podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Monday, September 7th, which means it's media Monday. Today, John Kelly and I talk through the aftermath of the NBA's astonishing punishment of the Los Angeles clippers and their owner, Steve Balmer, for circumventing salary cap rules, a story broken a year ago by the journalist Pablo Torre, who is taking a much-deserved victory lap in recent days. We also look at how Anna Wintor bungled a planned John Galliano exhibition at the Met, and why certain scandalized figures can't suddenly be rehabilitated in this day and age. We'll discuss all that in much more on today's episode of The Powers the Bee. [MUSIC] >> Hey, all right, it's almost here. Are you ready? >> Just grabbing my shoes. >> That's what you said 10 minutes ago. >> I just wrapped the video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch-goop and Nana's with the group chat, and of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. >> All at once? >> Yep, story of my life. That's why I switched to D-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. >> Okay, multi-tasker, I see you. >> Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. >> Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. >> That's a sign you've got to get D-Mobile. [MUSIC] >> So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. [MUSIC] >> Fastest based on analysis by Uclov Speed Test Intelligence, the data of National Speed Score Results, incorporating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026. [MUSIC] >> Happy Monday, everybody. Welcome to The Powers of Bee. Happy Labor Day. I hope you've been having a great weekend. It's media Monday with John Kelly, but before getting into that quick programming note, my new podcast for the making of a president about how political campaigns work in our modern era interviews with insiders who actually decide what happens inside a campaign. How do you decide on a message? Who makes the memes? How does the money work? We're going to be talking to all the players. Starting now, all the way through 2028, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast, Spotify, YouTube, Apple, Odyssey. It's everywhere, and it's coming tomorrow. It's going to be coming every Tuesday. So John, after our media Monday segment, people can wait a day and pop on over. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm excited to do this. Good to see you. We're all back on the grind after Labor Day. Today, we're going to talk about the Los Angeles Clippers situation. A lot of people out there on the internet were dogging me and John for commentary about Pablo Tore. I did a whole monologue/conversation with John Orin on Friday. Go back and listen to that before you come at me. We're going to reflect on that situation. He was still ongoing. Steve Balmer, the owner of the Clippers, denies the claims that he used outside advertisers and partners to funnel money to Kauai Leonard outside of the salary cap. He's being hit with something akin to the death penalty. The Clippers are losing five draft picks. Huge stories in the world of sports and business. We're also going to talk about the Met and Anna Winter, canceling a John Galliano exhibition planned for next year after a huge backlash, given Galliano's history of making inflammatory offensive and racist comments. I don't know how she didn't see this one coming. Anyway, John, I was telling John Orin on Friday's episode, again, everyone go listen. Some of our critiques recently about Pablo Tore, which we made, by the way in this context, there was that ESPN's story, basically saying that the NBA had found no evidence of wrongdoing on Steve Balmer's part, that popped about a week ago, so we were responding to that. And two, Tore's story, his exclusive, his investigation, had kind of been lingering out there in the universe for a year. And again, I said this before in my world of politics, typically if there's a like bombshell story, a bunch of other news organizations will try to chase it and confirm it. Not every exclusive can be confirmed by another media outlet. To Pablo's credit, he's right about this. There's not a lot of investigative reporting muscle left in the sports media world. Anyway, we were talking about Pablo's Clippers investigation in that context, also the context of Dylan Buyers reporting our colleague from inside the New York Times, where there's long been some tension, some discomfort inside the gray lady with all of these new media entities that they're licensing and partnering with, and obviously their partnership with the athletic. They licensed Pablo's podcast, so we're talking about it in that context. Anyway, people were criticizing you, John. They thought you were being dismissive of Pablo's groundbreaking investigation. Yeah, look, it's healthy. Everyone gets their time in the barrel and there are plenty of people on X that were criticizing me and some of the commentary that we've discussed on this show. I continue to take the position that this story is complex, which I think is one of the reasons that Puck exists to be able to really sort of appreciate these multifaceted, sophisticated stories in multifaceted ways. So let me unfurl for you how I look at this latest update and the texture it adds to the larger picture here. You nail the original point, which is that this piece of journalism was out there in the world, living somewhat unconfirmed, and that's what I think we originally remarked on. A good recent example, Peter, of your point was the Grand Platinum saga, where news broke around the candidate and then other organizations jumped on and were able to push it and push it and it became this tumbleweed that amassed by the end and obviously the candidate dropped out. That didn't happen here, and I'm slightly unpersuaded by the perspective that the ninth wealthiest man in the world isn't a newsworthy subject. Balmer, people forget is at this point, I think wealthier than Bill Gates, and a number of the very critical business strategies that he put into place in his time in Microsoft. He's often lamppooned as the guy he jumped on stage and got over all the salespeople. Peter, people saying that Balmer's not a newsworthy target? Well, I think that one of the, but Balmer put in the cloud strategy and in many ways set Microsoft on its current path, I think part of the victory lap that Torrey has taken is steeped in the idea that independent creators are rising up at a time when, as you just mentioned, sports departments are infeable to do this kind of investigative reporting. So I'm just saying that it was very remarkable that this piece of journalism was out there and that it was not being confirmed by other places. Like, normally large news organizations jump on these accusations and assertions when they're made, especially when they're made in non-traditional venues. So I think we both on that remarkable and subtly puzzling the ESPN, I would say counter-manding report definitely, I think, made this situation seem even more complex. Torrey has since, I believe I heard him on the Dan Patrick show, say that that was basically the clipper is just kind of reacting. But either way, I refer to a point that you made on the show, which I think is a very fair one, that Torrey style was just different, right? He was saying, I'm putting it all out there. And what he certainly did at the very least, and I give him credit for this. There's no personal animosity, I've never met this man once in my life, is it is possible that he definitely pointed to the smoke but didn't exactly explain all the embers that created the fire. Okay, that maybe a little slightly metaphorical, but I think that's fair. What happened, regardless of this, is that his work persuaded the NBA to open up a investigation that clearly had persuasive enough evidence that they unleashed this penalty, although we should say, Balmer is fighting back, right? Like this is, I don't think this is done yet at all, and I don't think this is law fair, right? And I'm not on anyone's side here, I care less about their clippers. I told John on the Friday podcast, John, people in my mentions were accusing me of being a clippers fan, carrying a lot of clubs. Oh my God. No, I know. Some people know I'm a Jets fan and I feel like I got lumped into the loser tier B teams here in some of the Twitter discreet, maybe that's just my own insecurity playing out. But I don't think that Balmer's response is purely an attempt to create this sort of law fair strategy where he's going to create a lot of problems for people who have to go through discovery. It seems like he may feel like he made introductions, but he didn't actually do anything that went beyond the code here. So we'll let a play out. I'm eager to see how this actually does sort of meet itself up. But Balmer is very different from any other owner in professional sports, like he has orders of magnitude wealthier than anyone. Balmer's network, you could go to the Bloomberg Billionaires index, it probably harbors around $175 billion a day, right? Like people forget this, he is almost in the Bezos quantum, and so he is wealthier than the NBA, right? The market cap of Steve Balmer is bigger than professional basketball, so, and remember, he got this team, John pointed this out in the varsity last week, like let us know if he got this team because Donald Sterling had a four-sale here, so he's not, I don't think he's going to lie down on this one. It's a very big deal for Adam Silver going after Balmer, is very, very different than Roger Gidell going after Bob Kraft, or Gidell going after what's his name, the guy everyone hated in Washington, Dan Snyder, or even different than was it Bart A. Giamani or Faye Vincent going after George Steinbrenner in the 80s, like this is asymmetrical legal warfare. What do you make of the ESPN Fiasco here? I told John a Friday episode that after the story broke or the investigation came out on Wednesday night, right before I went to bed, I just flipped on ESPN Sports Center. Obviously they're leading with NFL Blabber, again, to Pablo's point. ESPN is a lot of yapping, but the Clippers coverage was in the B-block or C-block even, no sports center. They had Ramona Shelburn come on, who was one of the authors. There was a triple byline on the ESPN story that came out a week and a half ago saying that the NBA had cleared Balmer. At no point in ESPN, they said Pablo's name, by the way, but they didn't acknowledge their own reporting or, you know, looking at the finer details of it, everyone's gone back and read that article. By the letter of the word, it kind of seems accurate, actually. They just blasted out the headline and social media posts saying that the NBA had cleared Balmer. But yeah, I mean, when you're a news organization, sports news, in their case, and you have egg on your face, and I remember this from CNN, you don't want to admit when you're wrong, you really don't because you're in a competitive space. They obviously don't look great right now. Shams also got dunked on by Pablo last week by, you know, I forget what he said, but Pablo posted some paperwork and some signatures that contradicted something that Shams had just posted. And so people were going after Shams. I mean, Pablo's got like a fanboy army out there that is going after anyone. But ESPN does not look great. Yeah, I am fascinated to find out what this report yields. I imagine that there will be some internal process that tries to uncover what went wrong here. I think actually one of the challenges of the story is it gets discussed at like a very high altitude binary term. You like Pablo or you don't. You know, ESPN got it totally wrong or they got some parts that wrong. Pablo nailed it or Pablo was directly right and there are some parts that we have to see what's in the NBA's investigation to totally understand. And there are all good people, you know, like so I don't know, you know, don't, don't at me over this. I actually have to say, I don't think in our world, pd in inside the media, there's a lot of chatter about like, you know, we did Ramona, Shelburton, Miss this, did this come from inside the Clippers organization and they were trying to get out ahead of it. And they gave her, they gave her, you know, bag of goods that the batteries didn't really work. I don't think ESPN is adding value necessarily to its viewership by self-flagulating unnecessarily. I think that it's, it would be fair to say that the investigation yielded a result that did contradict a previous ESPN report that seems like a pretty above board way to handle it. And I'm sure that, you know, buried somewhere in, in some piece that's now disappeared in the, in the depths of the internet. Maybe something like that did occur. But it's important, it's important to note it, but I think that there's actually like, at a certain point, the core, it's a business, the core ESPN viewer, somewhere in Baton Rouge, who is just curious about this as a, as a passer by consumer, is going to be head fake or just thrown by why we need to deal with previous news citations. So, but they should admit that it's, it's possible that they got snowed here. Yeah, well, for people taking clips of the show out of context, this is a show media Monday about what people in media think, how they're operating, people, personalities, trends, et cetera. It's about the media and what they're talking about. And that's what we were talking about. That's right. Every day on this show, we do some other discrete industry wall street Hollywood fashion media. And that is the points of view that we have. We're talking about what the insiders are talking about. Anyway, John, let's take a quick break when we come back. We're going to talk about Anna Wentor with some egg on her face over a met exhibition after the break. Evening Buyers Remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no. No, no Buyers Remorse. More like Buyers Rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers Rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See your seven day return policy at Carvana.com. It was a gruesome discovery off a dirt road in Georgia. Hunters had found a body. Was it immediately clear to you that this woman had been murdered? Yes. But who was this mystery woman in the woods? That looks like Mindy. I'm Aaron Moriarty and from 48 hours, this is the woman in the woods. I've never wanted to be wrong like this in my whole entire life. Follow and listen to the woman in the woods wherever you get your podcasts. A beautifully designed square space website is the difference between thinking about photography school and selling your portraits online. It's the difference between giving away those cookies you just made for free and running your cookie empire. A beautifully designed square space website is the difference between having a movie reviewing hobby and a movie reviewing career. Square space because no matter what you're into, a website makes it real. Use offer code difference for 50% off select plans terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to the powers of B everybody. I'm talking to John Kelly. It's media Monday. This isn't so much of a media story, but it was a media sensation a few days ago. Anna with tour had enlisted the disgraced John Galliano to host an exhibition at the Met in May of 2027. Now, I was actually misspoke in the first segment because this was not necessarily my world. John Galliano didn't just say inflammatory things. He was convicted. No, but he was convicted of an anti-Semitic hate crime. And people should Google what he said because actually I was thinking about this morning Peter before we taped it. It's unrepeatable. Yeah, it's really bad. You would think Anna went toward have better judgment here. She probably comes from a generation where, you know, she thinks people can easily recover their reputations cocktail party friends, etc. We don't really live in that world anymore. She wanted to have this exhibition. Jewish leaders erupted met with her privately. I believe in New York Times reported that she met with some Jewish leaders and philanthropists who were like, you can't do this. And Anna went to her said, well, he's a creative genius. We can do this. This is really a really big rake step on her part. Is this her personality that she would let this kind of thing happen? This doesn't feel like it. This story has been very interesting to me on a number of levels Peter. I worked for Anna for a couple of years in my career after Graydon retired from Vanity Fair, my reporting line moved into her. I liked her. We didn't work that closely together, but I found at that stage of her career, the reputation that she'd accumulated in sort of a devil's product era had. Yeah, she moved past that. She was, I don't want to overstate my proximity to her, but she was funny. She was real. I think she had contemplated leaving Conti Nast when it seemed like Heli Clinton was going to win and she wanted some sort of an ambassador. That didn't work out, obviously. But she dug in. And the other side of the, you're describing a sort of boomer personality, you know, where you think the rules don't really apply to you. The other side of that was I always thought she had a kind of British stiff upper lip kind of post war personality where when the going got tough, she got going and I actually felt like she really partnered with the new houses to try and transform the company. The knock on Anna was always that she was this unbelievably meticulous, you know, brilliant editor, you know, the stories about taking the book home were all true. It's impossible to be a micromanager perfectionist and also have the personality to operate and execute at scale, which ended up I think being a challenge of the company that a lot of people she hired didn't work out. There were some, there were some missteps. But anyway, when I heard the story about Goliano in July, I was thunder struck. This seemed like an obviously terrible idea. I know Goliano has been rehabilitated. said something terrible he made a mistake it's uh. on some of us unforgivable but we're human beings and i think that you know he went back to work he worked at uh. maze on marjello which is an o_t_b_ company for years uh. he has his deal is our coming out and i and he had a toned uh. i'm told and i you know i'm i can't judge what's the sufficient amount of time it and i think that like he had sort of we you know he had uh. he had regained uh. level of prominence in civil society and business that like a lot of people never get back to peter that's what's so so interesting are ironically about all this like when you think about the kind of people who were canceled he was canceled before we had a term for it when you think about the me to error cancellations of the coven cancellations some of them got back the ones further on the right you know some dance back independently but a lot of them were never seen from or or or heard from again more or less he made it back and yet she overreached here right that that is the the truly it's sort of uh. you know uh. terrible irony uh. because it is going to set him back in his rehabilitation and i think what's come out in all this uh. series of times stories great work by dealing great work by lord and there's a great conversation that marion loren and dill and all had on friday that pulled this apart i think we now really get it and and by the way if you ever work for and i think it's just it's as simple as it seemed i was i was uh. reminded of that uh. great last scene in london falling that patria red key book where he talks about seeing an impressionist work of clothes and it's so complex and you pull out and like oh it's exactly what i was it's only pat you know and and what really happened here was you had somebody who was surrounded by yes people who thought that she could just push this through uh. venesa freedman uh. went with the story of the year times probably before she should have before everyone was informed uh. there are a lot of uh. very unhappy uh. met trustees who were already sort of unhappy with the spectacle the sort of steroidal saccharine spectacle to the mech all of the common again the met the met makes like a billion dollars a year the gallop brings in like forty like i don't think everyone wants to be known for this explicitly and uh. and a lot of tensions came out and i think the the real reality is that and a winter who was this larger than life person is not only not larger than life anymore in post gay keeper era but like it revealed something to me and i say this with like only sort of uh. uh. wonder and astonishment she had this extraordinary career and and she she was a truly boundary breaking female executive in media like full stop like just did things that were truly impossible at the time but and it's not a billionaire right and it's not a principle she she's she's an employee she doesn't she doesn't own condemn us she doesn't own vote you know she's uh. she's not a billion dollar financier and so when everyone pushed back they they rolled her and uh. and i think that people around her are just astonished that she couldn't have seen this coming astonished that she i think overvalued her ability to pushback and some ways like i don't mean this is a fast out comparison at all but i think that there was uh. because she's been surrounded by a core group of people for a very long time there was a and i'm don't get to make this comparison but there was a bite in moment there where i think he was oh she's not invincible right like oh she um. she's not invincible and and that's really been the thing that's played out in media circles uh. for the last number of days just this this late donning revelation um. that this this person who what was truly is um is royalty and i mean i kind of mean that like very like literally yeah in an industry in two industries in media and in in the fashion industry that she's mortal and um. and that was just that was heavy cake for a lot of people john thanks for the breakdown fascinating story uh. i will see you on tv on wednesday on netflix i assume you'll be sitting in the jade york box no jade york jokes no way i don't know what you're talking about uh. he'll probably watch him from east palestinio hi oh anyway yeah yikes uh. welcome back from a little break post labor day it's good to see you buddy uh. we'll see you in the slack see in the slack and everyone who's listening please download making the president to all your feeds uh. great show dropping tomorrow thank you john appreciate you thank you thanks so much for listening to the powers that be the official podcast of puck partnership with odyssey i'm peter hanby and i'd like to thank our shows executive producers puck co-founder john kelly executive editor ben landy and director of editorial operations gaby grossment on the odyssey side thanks to bob tabudor and chris basal for their recording editing mixing and mastering and to executive producers asha saluja and lia reestennis hi this is pj vote from the search engine podcast okay you're a great small business owner but math was never your thing totally get it but if you run a small business you know how important it is to run your numbers enter zero that's xe ro as in x marks the spot for the perfect platform that puts accounting payments payroll and analytics in one place so you always have one clear picture of your business zero is more detailed than spreadsheets and just as powerful as other leading software but it's simpler and easier to use with visual dashboards zero makes it easy to understand your cash flow you know exactly what's coming in and what's going out so you make smarter decisions that can help grow your business without feeling overwhelmed by the numbers join 5 million customers worldwide who use zero to manage their finances learn more at zero dot com that's xe ro