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Did Redskins Senior VP Actually Compare Washington City Paper Lawsuit To Egyptian Protests?

The Washington Redskins are truly the gift that keeps on giving…unless you’re a fan of the team. You know about the whole mess surrounding owner Daniel Snyder’s ill-conceived lawsuit against the Washington City Paper because they weren’t nice to him, as well as his eventual explanation for why he did it.

None of it, of course, made people any more sympathetic to Team Snyder’s cause, and thanks to some remarks yesterday from Tony Wyllie, the Redskins’ senior vice president, people are about to view the lawsuit even more unfavorably than they already did, if possible. Wyllie participated in a panel discussion at the University of Maryland on ethics in sports media, and he said some…curious things, starting with this seeming contradiction:

“Some people ask, ‘Well, are you firing a warning shot to other members of the media? And I’d probably say ‘yes,’ ” he said, according to a live blog moderated by a Maryland professor. Wyllie added: “We’re not trying to be bullies…We’re not trying to make anyone afraid.

There seems to be a disconnect there…one many people would have undoubtedly pointed out if Wyllie hadn’t also said this:

“All we wanted was the truth, the same thing you heard up in Egypt where people were trying to find one thing — people getting hurt and beat up to find one thing — the truth,” Wyllie said. “And that’s what this is all about.”

You know, for a guy with a background in PR, a line like that seems like it has “PR disaster” written all over it. Look at it again: is it even possible he’s doing this? Is he actually comparing a universally-ridiculed lawsuit to uprisings against oppressive rulers? Well…what else could he be saying?

Remember a couple years ago, when Rep. Pete Hoekstra compared a bit of partisan political nonsense to protests in Iran, and immediately met widespread ridicule? This doesn’t strike us as much different, except that the Redskins catch tons of grief already. At this point, it’s as if they’ve just completely given up and are trying to get people to dislike them. And maybe that’s what the Redskins ought to do, since…is there anything they do better?

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