Cheap Seats Daily and its inferiority complex ravaged sister publication remain the go-to news organs for coverage of what the Redskins have officially dubbed the Cheerleader Car Wash Sweepstakes.
Yesterday, in this very space, we blew the lid off the latest listener contest for Dan Snyder’s sportstalk station, WTEM-AM, in which the Redskins owner promises to send his cheerleading squad over to winners’ houses and make them wash cars.
And in this week’s analog edition, we blow the lid off Dan Snyder’s cheerleader past, from his 2000 rackumentary “Beauty on the Beach,” all the way up to his latest scheme, which tells the cheering crew to put down their pom poms and pick up sponges and service his 25-54 male audience.
And, as promised, throughout all this lid-blowing we’ve run the same photograph of all those sudsy blondes, again and again and again.
That’s the shot that got The Great Dan Steinberg so lathered up he rudely barged into the comments section to pooh-pooh our Snyder/T&A expose. TGDS basically accused Cheap Seats Daily of hypocrisy and of being as exploitative as Dan Snyder!
Just because we ran this photo of sudsy blondes!
That hurts.
What kind of message does that contest (and this photo) send to the Little Ladies of Football? Think of the children, Dan and Dan!
(AFTER THE JUMP: Could Snyder’s layoffs at Redskins Park have helped this car wash debacle along? Is it Sherm or Sherman? Dan Steinberg reveals Lewis’ bingo past? Dan Steinberg conceals reveals his own bingo past? How loaded is the Skins’ 2009 schedule with Snyder humiliatees? Yankee Stadium ain’t the only ballpark in use this October? Nationals Park gets loaded with readers?)
Butt seriously, this new low/high in Snyder’s cheerleader marketing schemes might have something to do with personnel changes.
Donald Wells, the longtime director of the Redskins cheerleaders who predated Snyder, got fired a few months ago. Wells is now director of marketing for Sweethearts for Soldiers, a cheerleader-centric charity based in San Diego.
Wells’ replacement as Redskins cheerleader director, Stephanie Jojokian, told me on Tuesday that she wasn’t aware that any of her cheerleaders were going to be washing cars. Melanie Treanor Coburn, the Redskins Cheerleaders director of marketing, did not return phone calls. Jojokian says Treanor Coburn is on maternity leave.
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While there is no agreement on whether to call him “Sherm Lewis” or “Sherman Lewis,” everybody agrees the Redskins hiring of an “offensive consultant” is going to do nothing other than humiliate Jim Zorn.
But only TGDS took time to write up Sherm Lewis’s past as a bingo caller this morning.
For whatever reason, the ever-humble Bogger leaves out his personal past with the churchy game. In 2002, when he was Just Plain Dan Steinberg, JPDS blew the lid off DC bingo queen Vanessa Woodland in a fabulous City Paper cover story. Read it here.
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Zorn isn’t the first guy Snyder’s humiliated here, of course. We’ve already heard Jon Jansen gloating over the greatness of taking part in ending the Lions losing streak with a win over Washington.
But there’s a lot of Snyder haters on the schedule this year.
Mike Nolan is doing better than OK in Denver. Nolan’s the guy who Snyder kept delivering vanilla ice cream to during the 1999 season just after buying the Redskins, a super twerpy way of saying that he thought the Redskins defense was bland.
Snyder had started at middle linebacker for the Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers during a stellar NFL career and therefore was quite qualified to render such judgements never played a down of foootball at any level in his life but still felt qualified to render such judgements.
From the San Franciso Chronicle’s telling of the Nolan/Snyder ice cream tale, which has been told a billion times but not enough:
“It happened twice,” Nolan said of the ice cream deliveries. The first time, rapidly defrosting gallons of extravagant flavors were placed outside Nolan‘s office door with a note saying, “No more vanilla.”
“I wrote him a note, saying that my kids would enjoy the ice cream and that the advice was well taken,” Nolan said. “(I was) thinking he was kidding. Then I found out he wasn’t kidding.”
When Nolan stayed conservative with his defenses, Snyder went industrial. Nolan showed up one day to find a hand cart parked at his desk with melting 5-gallon drums of ice cream.
Fast forward to 2009…From an AP story that appeared on washingtonpost.com yesterday titled “Once dismal Broncos defense thriving under Nolan,” a different image of Nolan’s abilities as a manager of men emerges. As in this quote: “In this defense, I see pride, I see hunger, I see a battle for respect,” linebacker Mario Haggan said.
Has anybody said any of those things about this year’s Redskins? Well, when I look at Albert Haynesworth, I guess I do see hunger. But that’s another story.
Denver’s 4-0, and Nolan’s defense is given as the reason. The Skins play Denver at Denver FedExField on Nov. 15.
Gregg Williams is doing ok, too. Dan Snyder rejected and humiliated Williams after a Gitmo-esque interview process that had the Skins former defensive coordinator shacking up at Snyder’s Potomac mansion, the one with a good view of the River. No sensible explanation was ever given for bypassing Williams for Jim Zorn as head coach.
(My fave rumor out of Redskins Park, still being told, has Williams getting blackballed as head coach by Joe Gibbs because he wasn’t godly enough, which would explain why Snyder ended up with Zorn, who appends a biblical proverb to every autograph. Geezus Chrysler!)
But Williams is now with 4-0 New Orleans, and is getting a lot of kudos for the undefeatedness of his team. Michael Wilbon, who has taken to putting Williams’ name in his columns about as often as Charles Barkley’s or Michael Jordan’s, credited the defensive coordinator with Sunday’s big win over the previously undefeated Jets in a Tuesday story:
Okay, we knew the New Orleans offense was great, but how about Gregg Williams’s defense? Yes, Gregg Williams. That guy. Getting it done. The Saints harassed the Jets all over the field and forced Mark Sanchez into some killer INTs.
Skins play New Orleans at home on Dec. 6.
Norv Turner ain’t doing that great. Turner, the last head coach Snyder fired midseason, has his Chargers at 2-2. But San Diego’s .500 seems a helluva lot stronger than the Skins’ .500.
Washington plays at San Diego on the last weekend of the season in what will surely be a meaningless game for at least one of the teams.
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Major League Baseball’s playoff series are all on as of today. But Nationals Park is always available in October. So a literacy group decided to book the big room today to try to get publicity.
This morning, a crowd in the hundreds, or what a typical Nationals/Marlins game would draw, was expected to show up for “Read for the Record,” which organizers claim will be an attempt to set the record for “largest one-day shared reading experience ever.” Representatives from the Nationals, including Stan Kasten, did some reading.
The book everyone will be sharing is called “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” Too bad Dmitri Young wasn’t around for this one.
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