I was with you, thinking that there was no way he’d accuse an ump of being on the take without having a shred of plausibility. You did the research for me though, and it turns out that he’s just a big ol’ dumdum and Joe West is about to take his money. 

It’s sounds like in the case of this story, he was the guest not the host, so he wasn’t likely getting paid beyond token compensation to any guest of a podcast. That said, putting that out there in a medium where the intent is to be as widely distributed as possible is definitely reckless, and serves no purpose other…

I suspect Lo Duca forgot that he was acting as an actual journalist* here where things like slander are real and felt like he was just shooting the shit with his buddies in a bar or something.

I came into this intrigued by what Lo Duca had to say, and I’m no fan of Country Joe, but they did their homework before suing him, and it sure sounds like he’s full of shit. That begs the question of why he made up something that could be easily verified? Attention? Stupid, if so. And now it’s gonna cost him.

Also, Jack Evans once called him to berate him for writing that Nationals Park was being built with public funds; the dumbass argument Evans made repeatedly during his phone tirade was that all the money used to build the stadium, a tab that eventually hit about $1 billion, would come from new taxes implemented…

And then the Astros walked off the Yankees very own wife beater. 

Pictured: the subject, starting his sentence the way he begins every sentence, with the phrase "Well, actually..."

Hans ... bubby ... I’m your white knight ... 

His comments had everything to do about the game situation that just occurred and nothing else 

And A Quiet Place and Crazy Rich Asians are getting sequels now. I’m sure they’d do one for Bohemian Rhapsody, too, if they could figure out how.

I’m moderately fond of the original “Royals”, the Puddles version blows it away on every metric available.

They were also cheating because the running back is 33 years old and also Marshawn Lynch.

But can we really blame superhero movies for the fact that people aren’t going to go to theaters to watch movie they can easily watch in their home in 3 months?

And he has made more money than God and can self finance.

Why the fuck would I want to go to the theater to watch an adult-oriented drama? I can watch this from the comfort of my own home.

Again, that is the old guys’ exact point. Movie lovers don’t think all movies without CGI should be banished to streaming. They still value the theatrical experience and believe it should be available for adult-oriented films. This is what the entire argument is about.

Yeah, my town has one theatre screen and they force it to only play one movie on the screen at a time, and to hold it for weeks.  It's like they want one screen theatres to die.  And small towns, while I am complaining.

Thank you for mentioning what this entire debate is about. It’s not simply the old directors not liking Marvel movies. It’s about the business of movies and how Marvel, through the growing Disney hegemony, is eating up screens at cineplexes and killing the adult-oriented drama.

I think the problem is you have situations where a movie like Inception never gets made unless Christopher Nolan agrees to do The Dark Knight first.  Studios are sacrificing good films for corporate greed.  My kids will be watching Transformers 26 and some Adam Sandler movie when they are older simply because they…