Last night’s Redskins suckage was more of the whimpering than the banging variety. I’m burned out by the dramatic badness. It’s all been said. But I’ll say it all again, once more before apathy really sets in.
The Redskins stink. Like, really stink. Jason Campbell stinks. Dan Snyder stinks. Oh my, does Dan Snyder stink.
Chris Cooley doesn’t stink. But his different sort of attention-deficit disorder, which has in the past led him to show the world his naughty bits and film himself burning cows, is maddening.
Last night his look-at-me!-look-at-me!-ADD caused Cooley to blonde his hair and leave his helmet off while the TV cameras rolled.
Then Cooley’s ankle rolled and he’s likely gone for 2009. Cooley had been quieter for a couple weeks, seemingly aware that it ain’t cool to be cute when his team was a national punchline. But then this. So the last image of Cooley this season will be him being carted off the field with his head glowing from all that bleach, looking sad and ridiculous all at once.
(AFTER THE JUMP: Dan Snyder’s jack-booted thugs were out AGAIN? It’s harder to get into a Skins game than an El Al jet? ESPN protects Dan Snyder? Snyder’s lonely? ESPN rejects Campbell? PG County lets the Redskins walk for BeerInTheBathroomsGate™? Two free toppings? Have I died and gone to PapaJohn’s?)
Dan Snyder’s attempt to kill the message was in full force. I didn’t go to the game, so everything’s anecdotal, but there’s so much.
Tales of scuffles with security over signs and t-shirts blasting the owner abound. The only first-person account I got was from a friend who called me from FedExField just after being searched at the gate like he was boarding an El Al flight.
He asked the frisker, “Are you looking for anti-Snyder paraphernalia?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” the guard told him.
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ESPN seemed to be protecting Dan Snyder throughout the telecast. The commentators, particularly Ron Jaworksi, wanted to blame all the team’s ills on Jason Campbell.
The one shot I saw on TV of Snyder in the owner’s box, he was standing at the back, not in his normal seat up front. He looked frightened and smaller than I’d ever seen him, and even more lost than duty-free Jim Zorn down on the sidelines. Snyder’s box looked pretty empty in that shot.
Someday, people will feel sorry for him.
Someday.
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Though it now belongs to the world, I can’t let go of BeerInTheBathroomsGate™.
Yesterday I spoke with Norma Lindsay, the chief liquor inspector for Prince George’s County, about the photo and video evidence that Dan Snyder’s beer vendors had been setting up shop in the men’s rooms at FedExField for at least a year.
Lindsay said she hadn’t heard of the bathroom sales until last week, after Cheap Seats Daily linked a youtube video that had been, you know, leaked by a disgusted fan. (If you haven’t watched yet, it’s a must-see film with all sorts of fab moments, from the surprised tones of a urinator catching on to what’s going on — “Beer in the bathroom!” he says — to the requests for pot.)
But once the story broke, her office was flooded with calls from sickened citizens.
“Our phones were ringing off the hook last week,” Lindsay says. “Everybody — us, the [P.G. County] health department, everybody — got involved. That sort of conduct is absolutely against code, because it’s a health issue. There’s every sort of health inspector in the world at that stadium for Redskins games, but nobody had ever heard of that or witnessed it before. I can’t even imagine who would would want to buy a beer in the bathroom. That was frightening.”
Lindsay says her agency didn’t level any sanctions against the Redskins for the bathroom beer sales, and adds that the team cooperated with the county officials who inquired. “They assured us they had fired the man in the video,” she says.
From now on, she says, PG’s health and liquor inspectors will add public restrooms to their rounds of spots to check out when looking for bad liquor distribution.
“Nobody ever thought of looking in the men’s room for beer sales,” Lindsay says.
Cheap Seats Daily, flushing out the bad guys, one at a time…
More to come…
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Let’s end with a shred of good news: Today, for the first time following a home game all season, you can get free pepperoni AND free extra cheese on your Redskins special PapaJohn’s Pizza.
To paraphrase Warren Zevon: Enjoy every slice.
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