Unfortunately necessary disclaimer: Gruden’s comments were stupid, and indicative of a sad, irrelevant man who is angered by change.
When I first heard the colloquial version of Jesus’s teaching “let those who are without sin cast the first stone” it made a lot of sense. It was easy to visualize and understand. Yet it escapes the NFL and some of its franchises.
“Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” is more of a warning whereas Jesus’s version was more of an admonition. It recognizes that aggression towards others has a certain karmic boomerang affect.
Both versions apply to the NFL and now the Buccaneers this week. The Raiders, at the obvious behest of the NFL, cast out Jon Gruden for language and opinions that have been deemed misogynistic, homophobic, and racist by the New York Times.
Of course, the emails were not made public. If you can find any of them in their full text please send them to me @2qbfantasy They were slowly and intentionally leaked to the New York Times by the NFL, who uncovered the emails during their sham investigation into the horrific, toxic culture of the WFT (then Washington Redskins) which embraced sexual harassment and bullying as a way of life, and pimped out its own cheerleaders to skybox holders during an unpaid (but forced) trip to Costa Rica.
We know all these things because the victims of Snyder’s toxic culture spoke out, not due to an investigation that did actually happen. We actually don’t know anything about that investigation, because the NFL took it over, ran it, and once it was over, buried everything.
The Glass House of the NFL
The owners run and own the NFL. More than any other body in existence, the NFL is essentially immune from outside influence, scrutiny, and accountability. They run their own media, and control what they don’t own by carefully guarding access to teams, players, coaches, and content. They conduct their own investigations, carefully choose who gets to see the results, and weaponize the results against anyone who displeases them.
The reason only the New York Times has seen the emails with Jon Gruden’s inflammatory language is because showing their full text would elicit questions: who else is on the emails, who responded, what were the responses. All things we will never know. Another thing we will never know is the content of the other 649,997 emails that were examined as part of the NFL’s investigation into Synder’s toxic culture.
Gruden’s emails were exposed to the Times because he insulted Goodell and other owners. If you think, for a second, that the NFL actually cares about homophobic language, read the lyrics of who they just hired to play their Superbowl Halftime Show:
The NFL is shocked and reviled by misogyny? Really? Hate to dip into the Superbowl again but “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks” ring a bell with anyone?
But the real story is that the NFL is actively suppressing results that would embarrass or in any way harm the owners. The NFL actively passed up its chance to clean its own house by taking over the Snyder investigation and burying the results. Why the New York Times chose to play patsy in this game is beyond anyone who still considers it a bastion of journalism. But the distraction—the karmic boomerang—seems to be heading back in the NFL’s direction.
Seems like there are at least 40 people aiming stones at the NFL’s house right now, and its transparent walls made of fake virtue against misogyny and homophobia are about to come crashing down.
The Glass House of the Buccaneers
Unable to restrain themselves from letting a good crisis go to waste, the Buccaneers released the following:
It is really hard to believe that the Bucs are trying to rewrite their own history in this way. You would think the team that employed the offending person might keep their head down, but no, they had to jump on Gruden’s warm corpse.
First, one would have to believe that the Bucs were completely unaware of Gruden’s personality when they hired him away from the Raiders and the entire time they employed him. I’m not a Bucs fan, but even so I’m none too thrilled about having my intelligence insulted to this degree. You would have to be a special kind of idiot to think that the Bucs had no idea who Gruden was and weren’t all too happy to employ him for a king’s ransom for a shot at a title (which he gave them by the way).
One would also have to ignore that they currently employ Antonio Brown, who settled a lawsuit for sexually assaulting a trainer, and beat the shit out of a truck driver for no reason at all. And they just signed Richard Sherman who was just arrested for showing up wasted and harassing his wife at his in-laws.
So, please Bucs, get off the high horse and stop pretending you give two shits about anything other than wins.
The Coming Shit-Storm
Hopefully here is what follows: the lawsuit from the enraged 40 former employees either gets access to the currently buried results of the investigation or sues the NFL and the WFT, and everything including everything said and done by every owner sees the light of day.
The New York Times, seeing that they were used as a patsy, seeks to salvage their reputation by actually going after, oh I don’t know, the truth, instead of what they were spoon-fed by Goodell.
We all find out not only what happened in WFT hallways, but what everyone said when Kaepernick protested, and when many members follow suit. What all the owners really think about their boys club getting taken over and democratized. And hopefully the NFL realizes its place is entertainment, not in pretending to be the opposite of what they are: a paragon of virtue.