Sunday, May 18, 2008

Bob Ryan Out-Shanks Shaughnessy

The Dan Shaughnessy Blog does a great job dissecting the absurdities of Dan Shaughnessy writing, and when appropriate they also include deserving writers like Tony Massaroti and his ludicrous attack on the Patriots and their fanbase in the wake of Matt Walsh's testimony to the NFL.

But now Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan outdoes Shaughnessy (and Ron Borges) with a bitter and illogical attack on Bill Belichick It is worth some comment.

Ryan seems incensed that Belichick "still hasn't fessed up." Fessed up to what? Like so many others, Ryan refuses to understand exactly what Belichick did in Spygate. In casting that Belichick "was engaged in practices he knew were against the rules," Ryan ignores the facts about Goodell's malicious ignorance of the rulebook. Belichick was not engaged in activity he knew was against the rules - a fact Roger Goodell inadvertantly acknowledged with his comment that other teams wanted to tape, not doing so only because they felt it would be to no advantage.

Ryan also is outraged because the Patriots are "the most despised franchise" in pro sports. All that does is reflect poorly on the haters, who are as short on facts and long on vitriol as Ryan is.

Ryan is also ignorant on Watergate, to which he draws constant comparison. Watergate was not about an illegal break-in (in which nothing was stolen and no resistance to police offered) but about Democratic hate-mongering using the break-in as an excuse to persecute Richard Nixon for the crime of accomplishing more than they did, spelled out best in the book Bad News: The Foreign Policy Of The New York Times.

Ryan needs to reexamine himself here and while he's at it he can check Jeffrey Standen's examination of the Belichick-Goodell brouhaha.

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