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Snyder Tries, Fails To Explain Lawsuit

Meanwhile, anti-Semitism charge goes unretracted

by
Marc Tracy
April 27, 2011
The allegedly offending image.(Washington City Paper)
The allegedly offending image.(Washington City Paper)

Dan Snyder, the horrible miscreant owner of the Washington Redskins who somehow lassoed the Simon Wiesenthal Center into ludicrously accusing an alternative weekly newspaper of anti-Semitism, is back in the news: Yesterday, he withdrew the libel suit he had filed in New York court against Washington City Paper and refiled it in D.C. And he also published an op-ed in the Washington Post—I’d call it a cri de coeur, but that would imply Snyder has a coeur—explaining why he feels compelled to sue the paper over its sportswriter Dave McKenna’s brilliant polemic, “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder,” which you all should read. (And how about donating to the Washington City Paper legal defense fund?)

The op-ed does not mention the anti-Semitism charge, which is predicated on this image’s allegedly being “associated,” in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s words, “with virulent anti-Semitism going back to the Middle Ages, deployed by the genocidal Nazi regime, by Soviet propagandists, and even in 2011 by those who still seek to demonize Jews.” However, I have nowhere read the Center retract that utterly absurd allegation (the image clearly depicts a picture of Snyder defaced, in scribbles, by a “cranky Redskins fan” rather than the argument that Jews are Satanic). I left a message with the Center requesting further clarification yesterday, although, as was Tablet Magazine, it was closed for the final two days of Passover.

I will say this: I am glad that Snyder chose an offseason week to do this, when there is nothing football-related that should be demanding his attention instead. You know, other than tomorrow’s draft. SELL THE TEAM.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.