This is the final (I think?) post in my deep dive into the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of the Washington Commanders, and the toxic workplace culture that has persisted there since Daniel Snyder bought the team in 1999. In Part One, we discussed honesty and capitalism. Part Two was about the concept of “culture” in general. In Part Three, I looked at Snyder’s own testimony, and whether he acknowledged any responsibility in the team itself. And Part Four was about the supposed value of transparency. But today we’re getting back to the elephant in the room: sexual harassment.
As I wrap up this look into Snyder’s reign over the Washington Football Team, I realize I have spent very little time actually writing about sexual harassment, which was supposedly the whole the reason for the investigation in the first place. Part of that is the Congressional investigation didn’t really turn up much that hadn’t already been reported by the Washington Post in 2020, and so a lot of the most interesting revelations aren’t actually about sexual harassment. But it also reflects the trends I first wrote about back in 2021:
Namely, that the way these investigations into workplace sexual harassment unfold is well-known at this point, and kind of depressing. As I wrote earlier: “These reports are all written as if the authors are trying desperately to find a smoking gun, trying to find the anecdote that definitively proves a boss long rumored to be a jerk is, in actual fact, a jerk.” In this instance, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee seized on two details that could be such a “smoking gun.”
First, there is a story about Snyder trying to force then-employee Tiffani Johnston into his limousine after a team event in Washington, DC. The problem with this example (besides the fact that Snyder denies it ever happened) is that it seems to have been stopped before things escalated: Snyder’s attorney intervened and told him to leave Johnston alone. Obviously Snyder’s behavior is still not OK, and Johnston maintains it was part of an overall pattern, but the story lacks detail. And without detail, or some photo or video to grab people’s attention, it’s hard for an anecdote like this to break through all the noise and get people to go, “Oh well that’s certainly over the line.”
The second example the committee focuses on is the so-called “Good Bits” video that the team supposedly circulated to Snyder’s inner circle, consisting of lewd outtakes from the photo shoot for the cheerleader’s calendar. Unlike the limo incident, this is a pretty attention-getting detail: These were images and videos taken against the cheerleaders’ will, without even their knowledge, that were essentially used for the private amusement of Snyder and his friends. But the problem here is that Snyder simply denies he had anything to do with it, and it’s a hard thing to definitively tie to him. He obviously didn’t make the video himself, and nobody can testify that they were personally ordered by Snyder to do it. As I wrote about in Part 2 of the Snyder Files, this is what we mean by “culture”: Sometimes you just know what your boss wants you to do, even if he never explicitly tells you, and even when it’s technically against the rules or team policy. Then, when you get caught, the boss can just point to the rules and the policy, and say, “Well, obviously I never would have approved of that had I known about it; it was against the rules!”
But even if neither story quite sticks to Snyder, they have certainly stirred up trouble for him. After all, he is (supposedly) on the verge of selling the Commanders, largely as a result of the fallout from the Post’s 2020 original exposé. So it certainly seems like public outcry gets results. After all, this is only the latest example of team’s being embarrassed into corrective action by public reporting about harassment or misconduct within their ranks:
Back in 2017, after Sports Illustrated revealed misconduct by then-owner Jerry Richardson, he was fined and pressured to sell the team.
Over in the NBA, Robert Sarver just sold the Phoenix Suns after ESPN ran a report on him.
Back in 2018, the Dallas Mavericks fired an in-house reporter and their owner, Mark Cuban, made a $10 million to “women’s causes” (Whose causes? You know, women’s…) after a report into misconduct within their team.
In 2014, of course, Donald Sterling was forced to sell the LA Clippers after he was recorded making racist comments.
Over in baseball, the Mets had to fire their GM Jared Porter, and the Angels fired their pitching coach Mickey Callaway, after allegations of sexual harassment were made public.
It’s tempting to look at that list and go, “Wow, these leagues sure do take racism and sexual harassment seriously. All this public tattling certainly seems to get results.”
But does it? These outcomes seem like the kind of phony accountability that the capitalist class has come to accept as the cost of doing business. Workers get fired and the owners pay a small fine out of their massive profits. Sterling, Sarver, and Richardson all sold their teams for a huge windfall: Sarver and Richardson made over 10x what they paid for their teams, while Sterling, the worst of the bunch, made over 100 times his initial investment. Snyder is reportedly asking for at least $7 billion for the Commanders, which would be ~10x what he paid for the team; if he doesn’t get roughly that much, you can mark my words that his plans to sell will be put on hold until the Fed lowers interest rates…
But these aren’t even the details I find most depressing. I’m used to watching rich guys get away with everything — that barely seems worth getting worked up over at this point.
What bothers me more is what the experience seems like for the accusers. In the Snyder investigation, like all these stories, the women didn’t just have to endure the misconduct — they had to spend months and months going through round after round of retelling their stories. First to coworkers, then to journalists, then to investigators hired by the team and the league, and now to members of Congress. And, to state the obvious, these stories are not fun to tell. They are embarrassing and intimate and sordid and confusing.
More than that, though, there is an element of voyeurism to this process, of trying to get the most salacious details possible out of victims, even when those involved repeatedly say that those details are not the most important thing. In her testimony at the Congressional roundtable, Emily Applegate said, “Every day I was forced into uncomfortable conversations about my body and about my appearance.” She then gives examples, but those examples — being told what to wear, having photographs taken without her permission, getting asked about her dating life — are the kind of garden-variety harassment you see in outdated workplace training videos. They lack the attention-grabbing panache necessary to generate headlines. So even though they are all clear examples of harassment, they are almost anticlimactic. You keep waiting for her to get to the good stuff, the really shocking examples, the stuff that proves she Had It Worse than you can imagine.
But, of course, the problem isn’t that what happened to Applegate was outside the norm; the problem is that it WAS the norm. This is what makes these things so depressing, the way they demand people perform their suffering, and share every little detail in the hopes that we can find something that truly shocks us. Because the only method of accountability we’ve developed for owners and bosses relies on such shocking details. The only way people like Snyder are ever punished is if a bunch of strangers are so offended by the sordid details that they demand action, which means every scandal has to be more outrageous than the last one.
This basically ensures that the situation will get worse, not better, since with every public report we get more jaded and cynical about how these workplaces function. But if we listen to what people like Applegate are saying, and remember what we talked about in Part 2, we realize that the problem here is quite simple to fix. This was a cultural problem that emanated from Snyder at the top, who ruled like a dictator, playing favorites and changing rules as he went. Right now, as Snyder has become too embarrassing to the NFL, the league’s strategy is to just push him out (with his $7 billion golden parachute) and then cross their fingers and hope the next owner isn’t as bad.
Except this won’t do anything to prevent the problem from popping up again on another team. To actually fix the issue, to really solve these cultural problems, you need to take away the dictatorial power of the capitalist class. You need to establish clear, objective rules and procedures that are applied equally to everyone. So when boring, everyday misconduct arises, it can be punished quickly and consistently. The owner can’t play favorites or make unreasonable demands or fire underlings capriciously or blame people for other stuff that’s his fault. Of course, that doesn’t leave much for them to do…
I don’t mean to make this issue seem simpler than it really is. Sexual harassment is a complicated problem that is not unique to capitalism. Limiting the power of bosses will not make it go away. But I really can’t see how it will ever get addressed as long as the current economic model remains in place.