Dan Snyder, the egomaniacal owner of the Washington Redskins shows another level of his douchebaggery, by trying to get a Washington area reporter fired for writing an unflattering article about him.
Good grief, what a tool.
Did you notice that the paper he’s whining about is a Creative Loafing publication? Which, of course, makes me laugh at his tears even more.
I was reading about this on ProFootballTalk.com, which is where I was introduced to this article about The Danny. It’s sad for me, because I used to believe he was a good businessman and just really bad at running a football team. Now, that comfortable misconception has been erased.
If a guy like him can fail as often and spectacularly as he has and still be loaded, what’s a guy like me to do?
I predict that many sportswriters around the country will jump on this in a sports equivalent of the “Barbra Streisand effect”… nice going, Snyder!
Here is Gene Weingarten’s delightful Open Letter to Snyder, thanking him on behalf of Jets fans everywhere. Snyder seems to be the single unifying topic on which every single person in the Greater DC Area can agree, regardless of team, party, gender, race, creed, or sexual preference.
It’s my understanding that his issue with the article wasn’t the article itself (though I’m sure that was part of it… this is a guy who had security at FedEx Field confiscate banners calling for Vinny Cerrato’s firing back before he got fired), but rather a specific point made in the article: that he (Snyder) got caught forging names.
I don’t know all the specifics of it, but if it’s not true (as it seems to not be), then that’s libel and he has every right to take action.
The guy has done enough wrong and deserves criticism and scorn, but there’s no reason to make stuff up.
Except that Snyder was in fact fined by the state of Florida for that very action. Today’s Washington Post has an article (free registration required) on the suit.
It seems to me (IANAL) that the imposition of a fine for a specific action (assuming the Post story is accurate) and the subsequent payment of that fine create a perfectly reasonable basis for the City Paper story.
Snyder is officially suing the Washington City Paper. The Huffington Post goes into great detail about the reasons none of his claims have any merit. The best part of the suit is that Snyder’s suit alleges the image that was published with the article (a picture of Snyder with a devil beard and horns) is “anti-Semitic.”
This man has no penis.
The funniest part about that article is the credit on the photo. “Illustration” is quite generous, I’m sure the artist will be putting that one in her portfolio.
From the complaint filed:
[QUOTE]
. . .falsehoods in the Article (or items referenced in the Article) (“the Misrepresentations”) include, without limitation, the following:
[LIST=a]
[li]that “Dan Snyder got caught forging names as a telemarketer with Snyder Communications”[/li][li]that Mr. Snyder caused Agent Orange to be used to destroy trees “protected by the National Park Service” on “federally protected lands,” a matter about which previously published reports had been publicly corrected;[/li][li]that Mr. Snyder bragged that his wealth came from diabetes and cancer victims. . .[/LIST][/li][/QUOTE]
These claims are made in response to the following quotes directly from the column. (I don’t think any piece of writing titled The Cranky Redskins Fans Guide to Anything is intending to masquerade as an article.)
The column doesn’t even say what Snyder claims it says. “Going all Agent Orange” does not mean “caused Agent Orange to be used.”
It definitely does not. This is a lawsuit by a pissed-off rich guy and has no merit. Some of the stuff he is arguing against in the lawsuit is clearly factually true. I was going to say it’s a nuisance lawsuit, but but it’s intended as more of a threat: write something I don’t like and I will try to ruin your career, publish something negative about me and I’ll sue you.
There really, really needs to be some mechanism for firing owners, and he should be one of the first to go.
Having said that, for all of Snyder’s faults, he really is a Redskins fan and wants very badly for them to succeed…unlike 2 or 3 of the owners of perpetually sucky franchises.
His desire for the team to win is only outdone by his incompetence in making decisions to affect that outcome.
One would think a guy who owns a team named “Redskins” wouldn’t be so easily offended.
That’s why I love the guy so. He’s a true fan, and he’s working to the best of his ability to make the Redskins into a viable contender. And as a Giants fan, I love how he’s unable to recognize exactly how far short the “best of his ability” falls.
What really annoys me is that last fall, 60 Minutes ran a piece about Snyder. It was a puff piece that basically said, “Dan’s dad was a Redskins fan, so all lil’ Dan Snyder wants to do is fulfill his dad’s wishes of making the Redskins a great team.” And I fell for it a bit, which makes sense since it may as well have been produced by Washington Redskins Media. Not quite hook, line, and sinker, but enough to think maybe he’s just incompetent, and not a bad person. I was right the first time; he’s bad.
Most of my knowledge of Snyder comes from Gregg Easterbrook’s nearly weekly pieces about him in TMQ and the fact that he pays way too much for free agents way too often, making a top-heavy team of overpaid Me-first superstars with little developing talent – which teams like the Packers and Steelers have a lot of, and it seems to work for them in building winning teams.
I never knew until now how much of a dingleberry this guy was. How could someone continue to give this man money for anything?
I’m stationed in DC and all I can say is if all these Redskins “fans” spent as much energy cheering for and supporting the players as they do bitching about Snyder and how shitty the team is it might make Washington a place great players would WANT to come play. Instead players avoid this area due to the venomous neverhappy “fan” base. DC sports fans are the worst I’ve ever experienced by far.
We’ve argued this point before…and while its true that many Redskins fans are new-ish due to the transitory nature of the city (military, government employees), and that there are likely quite a few bandwagon fans, in general that is one hardcore and loyal fanbase.
And the fans have every right to bitch because they got to witness just how good a football team can be under solid ownership like the Cooke family, and what a miserable shell of its former self it is under new-money ego maniac Dan Snyder.
Its nice that Snyder is a big fan of the team. But he makes shitty decisions about his personnel, especially in free agency. I think he has some internal conflict/competitive issues with Jerry Jones and secretly tries to emulate him. Jones is the same way, too, only he can hang his hat on the 1990’s Cowboys that were so dominant (although I suspect that that situation was a lightning in a bottle scenario that all his money hasn’t been able to replicate since).
Yeah, sorry, I completely disagree and I say this as a Skins hater in Skins territory. Redskins fans are loyal through and through. Players aren’t avoiding the team on account of the fans, that’s fer damshur.