Brian Murphy: Daniel Snyder wasn't man enough to show for Capitol Hill clown show
There are no shortage of national crises curdling in the United States as confidence in the country’s institutions craters at the speed of our latest doom scrolling.
The Jan. 6 Select Committee is doing noble work exposing Donald Trump’s broad daylight coup attempt and the willful ignorance of his corrupt family, power-hungry hatchet men and immoral sycophants. Meantime, half the country either looks away, insists the sun rises in the west or wonders what all the bloody fuss is about.
Too often, however, Congress grandstands for sound bites and makes legislative sausage as if it were smearing feces on the walls.
Welcome to Wednesday’s hearing in the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the feeble attempt to pull back the curtain on Hef’s Mansion, also known as the Washington Commanders football team.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was on the griddle to answer for the league’s ham-fisted response to the vile behavior and knuckle-dragging management of owner Daniel Snyder, whose Washington Commanders franchise makes the Delta boys of “Animal House” look like stunt doubles for Gandhi.
Dangerous and shameful accusations about Snyder and his dude-bros sexually assaulting and harassing team employees. Enabling a toxic culture of drunken masculinity, paying hush money and intimidating witnesses like mob bosses absolutely should be investigated thoroughly.
Heads should roll. Goodell and the 31 other owners of this nonprofit cartel cannot continue sweeping piles of maroon and gold dirt under the Shield.
Congress intervened last year after The Washington Post exposed the NFL’s sham investigation of Snyder and revealed his abhorrent behavior and the workplace culture he created was even worse.
The league effectively buried public accountability after Snyder was fined $10 million and banished from team headquarters for a whole year while his wife, Tanya, runs the $4.2 billion gold mine in his stead.
Yeah, that oughta show him and his complicit brethren.
Serial groping, misogyny and the old boys-will-be-boys defense should be as acceptable as segregated drinking fountains. But it still lurks just below the surface of an alpha male world no matter how many female executives are paraded before the cameras and pink ribbons are painted in the end zones.
The Post dropped another bombshell moments before Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the committee chairwoman, gaveled the hearing to order. That a second team employee accused Snyder of sexually harassing and assaulting her in April 2009, three months before the club paid her $1.6 million as part of a confidential settlement.
Snyder has denied all the accusations against him and fled to France to avoid answering questions Wednesday.
But it did not stop him and his lawyers from hiring private detectives to conduct a “shadow investigation” for the obvious purpose of victim-shaming.
According to Maloney, the dirty tricks targeted former team employees, their lawyers and journalists in a smear campaign to shift blame and create a counternarrative to the harassment lawsuits and pervasive misconduct throughout the Washington organization.
Goodell had some serious ’splainin’ to do. Especially since the investigation he commissioned attorney Beth Wilkinson to conduct into Washington’s workplace was whitewashed into a 5-page press release instead of a written report.
This from a league addicted to lawyers and litigation, which produced a 243-page word salad to explain how Tom Brady over-inflated his playoff footballs during New England’s 2014 Super Bowl run.
Goodell appeared via Zoom from New York, a virtual potted plant between two real ones behind his profile. He bobbed and weaved like the $64 million PR genius he is, insisting the NFL already held Snyder accountable, changed the Commanders’ workplace for the better and would further investigate new allegations of misconduct.
Roger the Dodger was only flustered once during his two-hour testimony.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) showed a clip of former Commanders broadcaster Larry Michaels audibly drooling over the appearance for a female intern on a hot mic.
Tlaib called Michael’s behavior “unbelievable” and “so disgusting,” accusing Snyder of turning “a blind eye” to the frat boy behavior on his watch.
Goodell acknowledged it was “not acceptable” for how an NFL franchise should conduct itself.
“Remove him,” Tlaib railed. “Will you remove him?”
Goodell responded, “I don’t have the authority to remove him.”
Technically, that is true. It takes at least 24 of 32 owners to blackball a brother. But Goodell certainly could use his bully pulpit to press for such a radical but deserving banishment.
The poison that continues to ooze out of Commanders camp, which has been decades in Snyder’s making, should be melting the ice beneath him. Snyder’s team has only made six postseason appearances since he took ownership in 1999, compiling a paltry .423 winning percentage for a legacy franchise that won three Super Bowls in 10 seasons from 1982-91.
None of which matters in the wake of scandal after embarrassing scandal.
They include a still-unidentified leak of former team president Bruce Allen’s emails that featured Jon Gruden using racist, homophobic and misogynistic language over seven years of unvarnished correspondence while he worked for ESPN.
Gruden resigned as coach of the Raiders last year after the emails became public; he is now suing the NFL for ruining his already tattered reputation.
Maloney called Snyder to testify and defend the franchise that dominates headlines in the nation’s capital. Several times.
The coward refused, hiding behind an international “business conflict … that cannot be rescheduled,” according to Snyder’s attorney.
Maloney said Snyder was floating around France on his yacht and promptly subpoenaed the vagabond to compel his testimony later.
Meanwhile, several of Maloney’s colleagues – all Republicans – questioned the reason for the hearing and decided to cross-examine Goodell about all kinds of nonsense.
Jim Jordan of Ohio wanted to know why the NFL apparently had banned Barstool Sports douchebag David Portnoy from attending games.
Pat Fallon of Texas, a devout Patriots fan, questioned the integrity of the NFL’s 7-year-old DeflateGate investigation for several minutes before bemoaning the whole day as a complete waste of time.
I took an acid bath before cracking open my laptop to write about Washington’s latest clown show. Only I forgot to use a steel wire brush.
Hard to wash off this much stench.
