With my apologies to the late Richard M. Nixon for the appropriation of the above headline, Dave McKenna’s 26 year tenure as a columinst for Washington City Paper came to an end this week. McKenna, who might still freelance for CP on occasion, spent a portion of 2011 with Redskins owner Dan Snyder (above) seeking his head on a platter as retribution for a Nov. 2010 evisceration of the latter that remains one of the publication’s most visited pages. With his final column, McKenna is truly blessed that Snyder is such a reliable source of quality material.
The Redskins, who on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks sold Pentagon hats for profit, commemorated this year’s 10th anniversary of the tragedy by taking out a full page advertisement in the Washington Post showing a drawing of the Pentagon with a big team logo pasted right about the spot where the plane hit.
Then there’s the email Snyder’s marketing geniuses blasted out earlier this month disguised as a holiday greeting. The email was actually an advertisement from Audi, a major Redskins sponsor, which hailed those Redskins fans who “enthusiastically embraced” such “traditions” as wearing “feathers and war paint” to feel “oneness with the tribe.”
Hey, Dan, 1932 called! It wants its cultural sensitivity unawareness back!
And while Snyder continued shunning most real interviews for another season, he did sit for a Q and A in October with a Leesburg fifth-grader named Sully. That encounter ran on Redskins Nation, a daily infomercial produced by Redskins Broadcast Network, which Snyder owns.