Thursday, September 1, 2016

Your "Well, duh" moment for today

Comes now news that will not disturb your socks, not befuddle or astound, not cause newsboys to stand on street corners shouting "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!"

(Not that there are any newsboys anymore. Or Extra-Extras. I just figured the Blob needed a dash of nostalgia this morning).

Anyway ... here's the news that comes now: The NFL has found no "credible evidence" that James Harrison, Julius Peppers and Clay Matthews violated the league's drug policy vis-a-vis that now-famous Al-Jazeera America report.

This should have stunned no one, given that the NFL had already discredited that report when it cleared Peyton Manning, who was also named. So why the show trial for Harrison, Peppers and Matthews? Why bully them into testifying with a little unfiltered extortion, threatening them with suspension if they didn't 'fess up to Roger Goodell and his henchmen?

It was, frankly, a scene right out of the film "Marathon Man," with Harrison, Peppers and Matthews in the Dustin Hoffman role and Goodell as the evil dentist-drill-wielding Laurence Olivier.

"Is it safe?" Goodell said, drill buzzing. "IS IT SAFE??"  ...

Something like that.

In any case, why the naked-lightbulb interrogation is the obvious question here, and it has an equally obvious answer: The league grilled the three players not because it was necessary, but because it could. It already knew the report upon which its "investigation" was based was bogus. It already knew it was going to clear the three players. Goodell and his henchmen simply wanted to use them as an object lesson -- see, this is what we have the power to do, and there's nothing you can do about it because you signed that power over to us in the last collective bargaining agreement.

Just another way for Roger the Hammer to let the workforce know who's the lead dog in this sled race, in other words.

And they'd best not forget it.

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