Affordable Care Act Court Challenge
A federal judge in Texas struck down the entire ACA on Friday, but the law will stay in place pending appeals. NPR’s Michel Martin talks with Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News about the implications.
December 15, 2018
Saturday Sports: Hard Chargers And Ravenous Raptors
NPR’s Scott Simon discusses the week in sports with ESPN’s Howard Bryant, including impressive wins by the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News – I’m Scott Simon – where BJ Leiderman writes our theme music. Here it comes. Time for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: Basketball, football and litigation – America’s favorite sports. Howard Bryant from espn.com and ESPN The Magazine joins us. Howard, thanks so much for being with us.
HOWARD BRYANT, BYLINE: Hey, Scott. How are you?
SIMON: I’m fine, thanks. Let’s begin – but not as good as the Toronto Raptors. Let’s begin with the NBA. They’re not just lucky, are they? They completed their season sweep of the Warriors, the Golden State Warriors, this week – beat them by 20 points. What’s going on in Toronto?
BRYANT: Yeah, and they won that game on the road, as well. And that is – it’s a great one.
I know people talk about the 82-game season, and none of the games matter until the playoffs or whatever. But if you are the Toronto Raptors, and you were struggling for respect, you’ve never been to the NBA Finals, you were the best team in the league in your conference last year – or so you thought you were – and you won more games than you’d ever won before, and then LeBron James came in and blew your doors off…
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: …And then you fired your coach, you need these victories. And it’s important to measure yourself against the greatest team of this era, the Golden State Warriors. And so to beat them twice in a season, I agree with what Steph Curry said. We’re after the game. He said, hey, if we meet them in the playoffs, it’s 0-0. Nothing matters from here.
That’s OK when you’ve won three championships – quite a different story when you’re the Raptors, and you’ve got Kawhi Leonard, and it’s a very, very different team. I always say – we’ve talked about this so many times on this show – that the NBA is a best-player-wins league, and Kawhi Leonard is the best player, I think, in the Eastern Conference. He didn’t even play…
SIMON: Yeah.
BRYANT: …In that game, and they still won. So it shows you how much confidence this team has now.
SIMON: And now to the NFL and the AFC, where the Los Angeles Chargers – still a little uncomfortable to say that.
BRYANT: San Diego…
SIMON: Yeah. I…
BRYANT: Yeah.
SIMON: Well, Stephen Smith said San Diego again this week – didn’t he? – several times.
The Los Angeles Chargers are also for real. They beat the Kansas City Chiefs with a 2-point conversion in the last few seconds Thursday night, even though there were some questions raised about it. How are they doing it?
BRYANT: Well, I think they’re a very good team. And I think that one of the interesting things about the Chargers, especially – we talked about the Raptors earlier. The Chargers are in a very similar boat. If you go back and think about this history of this team, they haven’t been to the Super Bowl – they’ve never won the Super Bowl. They haven’t been to the Super Bowl since ’95, when they lost to the 49ers.
And you think about this team having all these players – when they had LaDainian Tomlinson and Shawne Merriman and Antonio Gates. And now they’ve got Philip Rivers, who’s the old man of the conference now. And this might be their best team.
And I think that what’s funny about it is that, on the one hand, the NFL is – it’s a mediocre league. You know, they – the game is set up for every team to pretty much have a chance at winning because of the rules. But they’re 11-3, and they’re right up there. They’re tied with the Chiefs. They’re a game and a half ahead of the Patriots.
And so maybe this is how it works the same way it worked with the Philadelphia Eagles last year – that the best team that you’ve had in your history isn’t the team that wins, but maybe this is the one that gets there.
SIMON: I want to close this week, Howard, by talking about – asking about Russell Beckman, a Green Bay Packers fan. He lost a court case this week. He – you know, he’s one of these Packer fans that puts the cheese stuff on. He wants to stand along the sidelines at the game tomorrow and wear his Packers gear at a pregame event. The Bears won’t let him do it. Firstly, I am appalled that this winds up in court.
BRYANT: Yeah. I think, on the one hand, it looks like one of these quirky stories where you say, well, wow, this is sort of kind of funny news of the weird. But on the other hand, you look at it, and you say, why is this in court in the first place? On the one hand, I understand it. It sounds…
SIMON: And the Bears are being small-minded – no doubt about it. Yeah.
BRYANT: But it also sounds like classic trolling. You have these events, and you do them for your fans. And why would you have a Packers fan on the Bears sideline? Now, the guy paid his money, obviously. He’s a season ticket holder.
On the other hand, you also recognize that this is – once again, there’s no reason to do this. There’s no reason, if you are a real, true Packer fan, why are you on the sideline of the Chicago Bears other than simply being a nuisance? I understand that.
And I think, on the other hand, you also look at it, and you say – you also say, well, this isn’t something that belongs in a courtroom. This is something that should be fun. But if it does end up in a courtroom, then I suppose that maybe the republic is not collapsing after all. There’s room for this.
SIMON: Howard Bryant, thanks so much.
BRYANT: Thanks, Scott.
Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
More Harassment Allegations Emerge At CBS
The network is under fire — again — for its workplace culture and its treatment of female employees. A potential merger could bring more upheaval for the company.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The board at CBS has a lot to fret about these days, with multiple sexual misconduct allegations and settlements involving top executives and stars. With all of this turmoil, even the future of CBS seems unsettled. There’s talk of merger with another company. NPR’s David Folkenflik has been covering the story for us and joins us now. David, thanks for being with us.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Of course.
SIMON: Tell us about some of these latest developments at CBS, where, I should say up front, I’m a special contributor to “CBS Sunday Morning.”
FOLKENFLIK: Where to start, Scott? I think first you’ve got to acknowledge The New York Times story, just this week, about a secret settlement between CBS network and the actress Eliza Dushku, who was – she had a part that was on several episodes of the hit series “Bull” on CBS, a primetime show. And she said that she complained about repeated remarks made by the star of the show, Michael Weatherly, that she felt, in a sense, violated. She brought it up, felt dismissed, and they phased her character out, even though they had planned a several-season arc for her. She received a $9.5 million payout that apparently would have been roughly equivalent to what she would have received had she stayed on the show for those years.
Most recently, the executive producer of the CBS News show, “CBS This Morning,” Ryan Kadro, is out. He’s going to leave the network as of next month. He had been executive producer when Charlie Rose was there, at least, for a stretch of when Charlie Rose was there as its star. There’s just been a couple of settlements of suits that CBS has made of women who said they were harassed by Charlie Rose, the star of that show and “60 Minutes.” And Kadro is on his way out. It may well be that his departure has something to do with those settlements, as well.
SIMON: And of course, this comes after the so many stories of misconduct by Les Moonves, former head of CBS, and moreover, his effort to hide those action with what amounts to bribes. What’s CBS done about that?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, the question on its plate at the moment is whether or not it’s supposed to pay the $120 million that it might appear that Les Moonves is due, as extraordinary as that figure is, for his service and for what his contract stipulates in departing from CBS as its chairman. He was forced out earlier this year. In fact, the very actions to – as investigators claim, the law firms doing this claim – to mislead, to deceive, to lie to the investigators and, in fact, to erase evidence may well be caused for the board to step in and to void or to diminish that payment. It would be quite an insult added to the injury that a number of women have said that Les Moonves did if he were to be paid off such a huge amount for being fired, effectively, as a result of the public awareness of what he had done to them.
SIMON: And, David, in your reporting, have you come across people who believe there’s a climate at CBS – entertainment division and parts of the news division – that foster sexual harassment and maybe even sexual assault?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, you know, the most glaring example of this in many ways is Fox News under Roger Ailes. But this was very disturbing coming from the top. Les Moonves had been essentially running CBS for two decades. And if you look at what happened in the news division, as well – the fact that Jeff Fager, a former executive producer of “60 Minutes” and former chairman of CBS News, has been accused of sexual harassment and tolerating a culture at “60 Minutes” of that, the fact that it turned out his predecessor, Don Hewitt, according to revelations, had essentially sexually assaulted former subordinate and colleague female subordinate so severely that CBS ended up paying her what totaled up to $5 million over the years in payments that apparently have still been going on as recently as this year, it’s hard not to think that there’s a climate that is not only hostile to women, but hostile to the idea of accountability for this kind of behavior, at least until these revelations now.
SIMON: And there’s a merger on the table?
FOLKENFLIK: It certainly looks likely. Shari Redstone is the controlling owner of both CBS and Viacom. She has wanted to merge these sister companies once more, reunify them. And the main obstacle in her way was Les Moonves and the corporate board at CBS that had been supporting him. That board has changed. The sympathies toward Moonves’ position’s changed, and Moonves is gone. So it would seem as though the stars are aligning for her to be able to get control of both companies and to ultimately bring them under the same umbrella.
SIMON: NPR’s David Folkenflik. Thanks so much.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
