Critics slam Snyder's hypocrisy

Snyder Tackled for Redskins Hypocrisy

By Rob Capriccioso“[S]hut the fuck up Dan Snyder, you own the most sickeningly racist relic of a brand in all of professional sports,” wrote Hamilton Nolan for Gawker in a piece titled, “Rich Idiot Thinks He Deserves $2 Million for This ‘Anti-Semitic’ Picture.” “How do you even sleep at night, you whore?” The blog also highlighted the following comment in a special post later in the day: “How would I feel if someone--nay, an entire organization--insulted my people by using a racist epithet and caricatures of Native Americans like me? And then refused to do anything about it when repeatedly asked to change it and even sued to do so? Huh. Let’s see. I think what I’d do is tell the jackass who owns the organization to go fuck himself.”

Over at The Nation, usually knowing for its complex policy pieces, Dave Zirin continued the theme: “Also, lest we forget, Dan Snyder owns a team whose name and logo are a celebration of the genocide of our Native American brothers and sisters. Every Sunday the Redskins take the field, their namesakes’ memory is slandered and suffering celebrated. If Dan Snyder was really an opponent of genocide, he’d change the name of his team. Until that happens, this incident reveals him to be worse than an insensitive dullard. It marks him as a hypocrite.”

Barry Petchesky, writing for the popular Deadspin sports blog, added another dimension to the hypocrisy of it all, noting that Snyder’s Six Flags company was alleged to have used stereotypes when recruiting Asian actors to work at its parks, asking for “Charlie Chan”-like behavior in a casting call. However, as the blogger noted, Snyder’s lawyer brushed those complaints aside in a letter to the City Paper, indicating the complaints from Asians were not as important as his charges of anti-Semitism. “No! You can’t put that aside!” admonished Petchesky. “That’s a hell of a lot more racist that doodling Devil horns on your photo, and you can’t cry foul on one and ‘put aside’ the other!”

The calls of support for Native Americans seemed to be everywhere. NPR, The Huffington Post, and many Facebook and Twitter messages lit up with a common message to Snyder: Change the name of the team, and quit being such a hypocrite.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Redskins Owner Sues Over "Anti-Semitic Imagery" and Redskins Make Children Cry.