Frenzied assaults on NFL show far-left bias of sports writing elites

BALTIMORE—Just in time for this fall’s congressional elections, a jeering section of media pundits and politicians have taken to the airwaves denouncing the National Football League for not properly policing the private lives of two of its most visible employees.

No one is excusing the unconscionable behavior of the Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Rice and the Minnesota Vikings’ Adrian Peterson nor a handful of other NFL stars, mind you. Domestic violence and child abuse are serious violations of our criminal and moral codes and their perpetrators ought to receive stiff punishment. But this is America. They deserve a fair trial and—in the likely event they are found guilty—appropriate punishments that fit their particular crimes. In the meantime, let’s get real. The NFL can urge its several thousand roster and taxi squad players to behave in a morally upright manner, but it cannot do 24-hour surveillance on them without seriously violating their civil liberties anymore than NBC News, IBM, GM or ExxonMobil can ride herd on their workers’ private lives. Yet day after day the self-appointed moral arbiters of our lives keep yelping for the resignation of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the application of tough sanctions against his league’s 32 football teams. Since the players being punished are all African-Americans, one can only wonder if there’s a faint aroma of racism in the air. Yet it was open season on professional football long before Rice and Peterson emerged as media whipping boys. The Washington Post, led by such passionate columnists as Mike Wise, Sally Jenkins and Robert McCartney, has conducted a lengthy campaign to badger Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder to change his team’s nickname. Snyder, to his credit, has been steadfast in defending his First Amendment rights.

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The push to raise public consciousness began a few years ago—ironically, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian—even though repeated polling shows a large majority of native Americans are not offended by the name Washington Redskins and that many take pride in the team’s depiction of its mascot as noble, resolute and strong. The support for the nickname is even stronger among Redskins’ ticket holders and the general public. Rarely a day goes by that the Post fails to highlight a story promoting one or another aspect of their drive to change the “offensive” name. The crusade is so intense and so one-sided that even less-than-alert readers have to wonder if they’re being jobbed. Jenkins in a recent column even urged Congress to “step in and regulate the business of these 32 billionaire plunderers.” Fifty senators—all of them Democrats—have written to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell urging a name change. Given the legislative branch’s job performance over the the last decade, Jenkins’ recommendation ought to give everyone particular pause. Ironically, until the last few years, the Redskins’ enjoyed almost fawning support from the Post and other D.C. media. Sports writers and commentators dined out in the team’s press box and a host of Washington media celebrities were guests in the owners’ sky box and often highlighted on national TV. Enough already! One suspects that the chorus of pious rhetoric emanating from the left-wing media and many in the Democratic Party is merely an attempt to distract the public from the shortcomings of President Obama’s foreign and domestic policies. H.L. Mencken, the iconoclastic sage of the Baltimore Sun once defined puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” So it is with the anti-football harpies crying for the scalps of the Washington Redskins not to mention the pelts of the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears. Rush to judgments—especially by the media and politicians—are never seemly, especially when they seem to echo the Queen of Hearts' declaration in Alice in Wonderland …. “sentence first, verdict afterward.”