The Redskins Considering Legal Action Vs 106.7 The Fan For Parodying Their Broadcasts of the Games
Post - Yes, insists the Washington Redskins’ chief spokesman, the team can take a joke. But perhaps the frustrations of a 3-9 season got the better of the football organization, given its initially testy reaction to a series of parody broadcasts that made the Redskins, their owner and their play-by-play announcers the butts of comedy bits. In the series of dead-on weekly parodies, which began last month, Washington sports-talk radio station WJFK-FM (also known as “106.7 The Fan”) has fun at the expense of the Redskins and their radio broadcasters, Larry Michael, Sonny Jurgensen and Chris Cooley. The bits, performed by host Danny Rouhier and produced by Ajay Atayee, are a mock play-by-play of a Redskins game, voiced primarily by Rouhier as a fake Larry Michael and fake Jurgensen. Actual clips of Cooley — like Jurgensen, a former Redskin — are included in the routines. In addition to mocking the team’s poor play, the routines have skewered everything from long waits and high prices at FedEx Field (“This score means all fans in attendance can wander the parking-lot wasteland and sit in traffic. All that for 50 bucks!”) to Snyder’s occasional litigiousness (one segment is fake-sponsored by “Michaels, Michaels, Michaels & Michaels — official suing partner of the Washington Redskins”). Team spokesman Tony Wyllie complained about them to WJFK’s Redskins beat reporter, Grant Paulsen, last week. According to station sources, Wyllie said the routines were malicious — so malicious that they could prompt legal action by the Redskins. The station sources asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation; Snyder has sued before — in 2011, when he brought, and later dropped, a defamation suit against the Washington City Paper over an article that chronicled his alleged failings as team owner. Wyllie’s anger over the broadcasts prompted Chris Kinard, WJFK’s program director, to call time out. He met with Wyllie on Tuesday to discuss the comedy routines. Kinard declined to comment, but Wyllie insisted after the meeting that peace was at hand. “All we did was ask questions about what they were doing,” he said in an interview. “Once they said it was all in jest, we were fine with it.” He added, “I have a sense of humor, like everyone else. It’s a joke, and I take it as a joke. Once they said it was all a joke, that’s all there was to it.”
Every so often, we are reminded what an asshole Daniel Snyder is. We sometimes forget about the 30 dollars he charges to park 3 miles from the stadium, how he tried to sue a senior citizen for giving up her season tickets, and how he tried to sue the Washington City paper for writing a negative article about him. For real. He is just a thin-skinned dickhead who now decided a radio show, doing a comedy bit, was worthy of discussing a lawsuit about. Apparently they just needed to be explained to that it was a joke. Really? A comedian, on a radio show, using voices, mocking the Redskins, and it isn’t a parody? How does this PR guy even have a job? Snake it til you make it to the max. Because if this season has taught us ANYTHING, it’s the Redskins PR team is the absolute worst. It’s either that, or they are actually trying to strong-hand WJFK from doing the bit again because they are butthurt over it. Maybe if the Skins put a decent product on the field, they wouldn’t be made fun of nonstop. Just a thought.
By the way, if you grew up with Larry Michael, these are spot on. Which makes it funnier, because there is about a 3% chance Rouhier is joking in these. He is clearly a pissed off Skins fan who is destroying the Skins and Snyder behind the disguise of calling it a joke. You can listen to the most recent one here. He skewers them.
PS: Such irony in Snyder and the Skins always being “offended” by people making fun of them, but when it comes to the team name, there’s not a single offensive thing about it, right?