Listeners are urged, "Bring your best 'Beat Dallas!' sign and you can win a six pack of club seats!"

I can't wait to see how high the "Worst Owner Ever!" banner will place.

***

Moderators at Dan Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, no doubt emboldened by the see-no-evil clause their boss invoked while banning signs from FedExField, have a type-no-insult policy in place.

Posters on the site have been warned not to say anything negative about the team in a thread announcing a send-off that's being organized from Redskins Park for the Dallas game.

The warning:

"Be advised: This is not an opinion or debate thread. Please do not use this thread to verbally attack, make fun of, laugh at, or otherwise belittle any of the participating members or Redskins players/coaches/staff or owner. To do so will result in a mandatory ban."

(AFTER THE JUMP: Why would Dan Snyder sanction such censorship? Why is Slate so mean to Sandra Bullock? Why didn't the Redskins draft Michael Oher? Why did John Riggins jump on Joe Theismann when Joe Theismann's leg was broken? Did you just say John Riggins jumped on Joe Theismann when Joe Theismann's leg was broken?)

Before this season, these send-off announcements were posted regularly on Snyder's site. But, the gathering memos were stopped because they only inspired fans to tell the owner just how much they loathe him in follow-up posts.

The situation Snyder has created in this market is unlike anything in all of professional sports.

I've said it before, and I believe it: Even if the Redskins go on a miracle streak and win the Super Bowl this season, when Snyder holds up the Lombardi Trophy at the victory rally, he will be booed.

***

In his Slate review of "The Blind Side," the feature film based on the life of Baltimore Ravens' rookie Michael Oher, friend and hero Josh Levin treats Sandra Bullock as Lawrence Taylor did Joe Theismann.

I only used that simile so I'd have an easy segue into this: I haven't seen "The Blind Side," but I'm told it opens with a clip of one of the most famous plays in Redskins history -- Taylor playing wishbone with Theismann's leg in that 1986 "Monday Night Football" game.

Looking at the gruesome clip this morning, I noticed for the first time that John Riggins for some reason jumps on top of the pile with Theismann and his newly restructured leg at the bottom. Riggins had tossed the ball back to Theismann just before Taylor hit him during the flea-flicker gone wrong.

Perhaps that's why Theismann went after Riggins so hard last week after Riggo piled on Dan Snyder. Or maybe it's because Theismann is employed by Snyder.

In any case, Theismann never played another down of football. But, he lived to talk about it and everything else...a lot. If he was a horse, Theismann would have had a curtain around him within a minute and there'd be one less sportstalk host in the DC market.

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

The New York Times...has already published five articles about Le's disappearance and murder and the apprehension of suspect Raymond Clark III. The Boston Globe has published at least six stories about the case, and the Washington Post has run at least three briefs from the Associated Press. The Times of London, published five time zones away, can't seem to sate its appetite for Annie Le news. Even the proletarian New York tabloids—the Post and the Daily News—have gone ape for the story.

...besides which, a slew of well-sourced and quick-response articles in the university's paper of record, and, by my count, two cover spots in the Washington Post Express.

My problem with Shafer's piece isn't his gripe that crimes at Yale and Harvard receive undue attention. (They do; always have.) I went to Yale—graduated, even—and Shafer's points are well taken. But what the media critic misses is that, when it comes to murder, the Ivy League's disproportionate share of media attention is part of a larger, and more regrettable, trend.

In D.C., the murders of (say) a white, affluent northwest couple like Michael and Virginia Spevak prompt the kind of media bonanza with which no targeted shooting in southeast could possibly compete. Then there's the case of Alice Swanson, a well-educated, middle-class white activist wired into the world of think tanks and nonprofits. A full year after her death, her memorial was still standing—and when, two weeks ago, the mayor's office removed the ghost bike, people freaked. Of course, as one commenter noted:

The law says the memorials come down they come down. If this was am unsightly teddy bear memorial surrounded by liquor bottles and candles for a gun shot victim you would be petioning the Mayor’s Office for it’s removal.

This isn't just about the media; it's about us and our assumptions. As a paper, we only put murders above the fold when they defeat expectations—sensationally or otherwise. As humans, we perk up when a story elicits a double-take, or forces us to reassess presuppositions that may have been bogus to begin with. Would this story have blown up in the mid- to late '80s? Probably not; New Haven was a lot grittier back then. But if a GWU student were kidnapped, brutalized, and discovered a week later in a wall, I'm pretty sure the event would garner more coverage than the corresponding death of a kid in Ward 8. (Ask Cherkis.)

Just saying. Newspapers have been on this treadmill for a long time. If anything, the Annie Le story is one that deserved to make it.

***

Closing hat-tip: After calling the New York Times "one of several Ivy League house organs," Shafer is wise to acknowledge that at Slate (which fits much the same description), "no Harvard or Yale story proposal will ever be laughed out of a story meeting, no matter how mundane."

I don't think I'd ever heard a college player booed by home fans like Vasquez was last year. It was like Juwan Howard at MCI Center right before he was run out of town. But Howard was getting paid eight-figures a year (!) to take that abuse.

Vasquez tried to get out of College Park, but yesterday he withdrew his name from the upcoming NBA draft.

Seems NBA scouts thought less of him than the Terps fans.

Seriously, do other college stars get booed at home?

***

Manny Acta lives to lose again!

The Nationals manager-for-now got to watch Elijah Dukes misplay two balls hit to the outfield by consecutive Yankees batters in the seventh inning, turning two outs into two Yankees runs and a lead into a loss in New York.

The .258 winning percentage means the Nats are now on a pace to beat the '62 Mets mark of 120 losses.

Why is Acta still around?

Well, much appreciated Cheap Seats Daily commenter Angry Al posted that Acta's going to stay no matter how much losing goes on, because the Lerners are so cheap they don't want to pay Acta and pay another manager.

I hadn't thought of that. But sounds like a plan!

***

Biggest winner in baseball yesterday: Barry Bonds.

How the hell are the feds gonna move forward  with their lame prosecution of Bonds for a couple dubious lies, now that Sammy Sosa's been outed?

Turns out Sosa's was among the 104 names on baseball's not-so-secret list of positive testers from 2003.

Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens all swore before Congress and country that they never ever never ever took anything. And The Man is going to let them walk, even though there's at least as much proof that they're PED-ophiles as we've seen against Bonds? No way. (A-Rod just lied to Katie Couric. That's fine.)

***

Biggest loser in baseball yesterday: Mike Lupica. The enthusiastic New York sportswriter's book "Summer of '98," sanctified that season's home run duel between Sosa and fellow chemical Popeye, Mark McGwire. "Summer" now stands alongside the Washington Post's 2003 editorial about Colin Powell's U.N. speech about all the WMDs in Iraq, a piece headlined "Irrefutable!," as the most ridiculable documents ever published.

(According to a review on Amazon, "Lupica gives both McGwire and Sosa their proper due.")

Please, Cal Ripken. Admit you used steroids! Baseball will never get past the Dead Balls Era™ until you do!

***

On the verge of the U.S. Open: Slate posts a video of what golf, a game where losers are allowed to blame camera clicks, would be like if basketball announcers called the action.

The real treat is hearing a few seconds of Johnny Most, the greatest play-by-play man in the history of history. And I'd forgotten how forced Dick Vitale's calls were.

The piece was conceived by my friend Josh Levin, Slate's sports editor and the godfather of tape-measure journalism (count the measurements!), and put together by his colleague Andy Bouve.

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

William Saletan vs. John McWhorter and Stephen Colbert vs. Byron York, after the jump.

• At his New Republic blog, John McWhorter lights into Slate's William Saletan (Amanda Hess' favorite pro-lifer). A few years ago, McWhorter writes, Saletan "was shot at like a varmint...after writing some columns on evidence that black people are genetically less gifted mentally than whites," and now he's being too timid in response to findings that No Child Left Behind has failed to close the achievement gap between white and black students. Specifically, McWhorter thinks Saletan made a  mistake by asking "Why categorize and measure students by race?" McWhorter, who is both black and conservative--two decades after Armstrong Williams rose to prominence, this still qualifies as a novelty--backed off a little when he read the mea culpa that Saletan, who's white and conservative, published. The novella-length exchange is worth your time. In short, McWhorter maintains that education critics shouldn't shy away from the topic, even if the new study suggests that disparities in academic performance transcend environmental factors, but Saletan just isn't ready to go there. My two cents: The best public schools in the country are light-years behind mediocre private institutions. Why, then, are we surprised that a federally mandated public education program put together by Republicans failed to do what university-level education departments haven't been able to accomplish in decades of classroom experiments? Now would be a great time to stick it to Congress--most of which members' children attend private schools--for killing D.C.'s voucher program.
  
• Also on the race front: FishbowlDC (yeah, that Fishbowl) did a nice job capturing (and by "capturing," I mean, "imbedding a video of") Stephen Colbert lambasting Washington Examiner columnist Byron York. The sentence that got Colbert's team of writers--as well as Matt Yglesias (or, at least we think it was Yglesias who wrote about it)--so upset? "But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are." The rest of the column is simply a recitation of approval ratings broken down by race (York discovered that Obama has a significantly higher approval rating--we're talking 20-30 percentage points--among black voters). The fallout from his column was hot enough to inspire York to write a follow-up. IMHO, this kind of analysis is innocuous compared to the racial finger-pointing that Andrew Sullivan, Dan Savage, and, yes, even I committed when exit poll data suggested that blacks and Latinos bore a disproportionate responsibility for the passage of Proposition 8 in California. (Nate Silver, god love'm, proved us all wrong.)

That's it for me, good readers. Keep your eyes peeled for next week's Summer Music Guide.

But the smart-aleck online publication isn't going to stand pat with its aggregational offerings. It's hiring (!) new aggregators.

According to an e-mail seeking applicants, the mag is "going to be increasing the pace and scope of our aggregation features. We want to hire two very energetic media omnivores who can write fast, read faster, and have a sense of humor. These would be contract positions with Slate."

Take Slate. This a.m., I stole three minutes from actual work to read up on the essentials—you know, my daily dose of counterintuitive rhetorical questions and columns on the best way to break one's leg. Before I could click through to a piece on "why you should let your kid suck his thumb" or a Jack Shafer column asking, "prithee, does we need newspapers?" a ginormous Volkswagen ad swooped in, flashing sleek images of a black sedan and dropping catchphrases like "ART GALLERY QUALITY INTERIOR" and "POSITIVELY OOZES CLASS." Yum! Before I knew it, I had accidentally clicked on an article asking whether socialized medicine had killed Natasha Richardson. I did not read this article.

Lil' disclosure: A number of similar ads are circulating on our own site—some kind of shoot-'em-up film trailer and a massive White Castle flash animation that swiftly takes over your whole screen. Don't bother trying to mute, pause, or stop the animation—those buttons won't work. Nor will the [close this] button. Your only option? Close the browser, or navigate away from our site.

So please, keep reading. And don't scroll over. Here's Chuck Berry:

I'm not one for fellating fellow journalists, but I'd make a knee-bruising exception for Slate's Ron Rosenbaum, the first big-name journalist (who's not a card-carrying libertarian) to stick up for President-elect Barack Obama's nicotine addiction.

And not only does Rosenbaum defend our Dear Leader's decision to do whatever the fuck he wants with his discretionary income/lungs, he also accurately captures the sympathies of fun-havers everywhere:

All us sinners—of various habits and forms—loved Obama for it and loathed Brokaw, Walters, and the nation of scolds we have become in their collective attempt to shame the poor guy (yes, president-elect, I know, but here, just a poor, conniving backslider) into some self-scourging confession.

You have to admire Obama's good nature as he puts up with these narrow-minded nannies (addicted to tobacco in their own perverse, negative way) and offers up this masterpiece of obfuscation.

Kudos, Mr. Rosenbaum, and way to stick a finger in the eye of obnoxious social engineers. I wrote about smoking just a few days ago when I thought I might quit due to a cold (I didn't), and a few weeks ago on "Stop Smoking Day" (or whatever it's officially called).

Photo courtesy of flicker user Roomic Cube

-Mumbai (India) is a disaster. Daniel Politi at Slate writes a smart synopsis.

-Ever been Rick-Rolled? (It's terrible--google it with caution). Andrew Sullivan has a way for you to enjoy the Rick without the Roll.

-The Washington Post has the latest on the Chevy Chase killings. (Insert deserved cynicism here over the efficiency with which the cops are solving the murders of two old, white, rich folk--while shrugging their shoulders over various shootings and deaths in the ghettos.)

-Writing in the Washington Times, Ziad Asali asserts post-election that "Racism, the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room, has shrunk and is now no bigger than a jackass." Whew, glad that's over with!

To be fair, Manjoo prefaces his article with this:

Skype isn't new—it launched in 2003*, and millions of people around the world use it. But because Skype is so unbelievably cheap, I've run across lots of people who still consider it some kind of Internet dark art—a service with mysterious inner workings, one that requires some kind of special equipment or technical know-how to get it up and running.

Incidentally, Manjoo's reasoning for why his article is timely now complements my argument for why it's not. Slate's tech crew has taken to writing about facets of Online culture only after they've grown too big to ignore. Someone could've written the Skype how-to piece two years ago and made the same argument--the technology really hasn't changed that much--and it would have been compelling and edgy. "Give up my landline? But it's only 2006!" And there's a good chance that Slate's how-to piece would've been one of a few (published today, however, it's but one of many, many really fine articles and posts about the usefulness and ease-of-use of Skype).

I've no quotes to back it up, but I suspect that its behind-the-curve tech writing reflects Slate's perception of an aging (or aged?) audience. Technophiles and/or general Online readers looking for cutting edge tech writing from a mainstream outlet are more likely to get their goods from Wired.

* Wonkette live-blogged Barack Obama's television infomercial last night on "poverty and murder." All you need to know:

8:22 — Nevermind, the mother wasn’t the fourth Poor in his story. It’s Joe Biden.
8:22 — No — it’s Claire McCaskill.
8:22 — No — It’s Barack Obama. He is the fourth Poor in his own story.
8:23 — No, REALLY, It’s some guy named Mark, Louisville, lost job at factory, unemployment lines, can’t afford shit, THIS IS MOVING SO FAST, he wants to– THE END OBAMA SHOOTS A THREE POINTER.

* Playgirl editor forces Jezebel editor to consider Barack Obama's penis.

* The New Gay takes 9:30 club patrons to task for dancing, homophobia, tallness.

* John Dickerson for Slate: Why is the McCain camp so happy?

* GWU blog The Colonialist finds something fishy within the new McCain attack ad.

* And in this newspaper:

- The Battle For the Mid-Atlantic: CP chronicles the last legs of the local campaign. Justin Moyer takes McCain; Franklin Schneider takes Obama.

- Which D.C. Pharmacies won't stock your contraception.

- Loose Lips tells you to write-in for Carol Schwartz. Bring a pencil.

- And in arts: Maura Judkis on Richard Avadon; Aaron Leitko reviews Gang Gang Dance.

Photo of the 9:30 Club by rpongsaj.

* For those interested in competing in one of those high-stakes, emotionally wrenching reality television programs---and for those whose place of employment merely imitate them---Slate's Joanna Weiss has your guide to how not to be the first contestant kicked off a reality show.

* New Columbia Heights has updates on the proposed neighborhood farmer's market: At a recent ANC meeting, William Jordan proposed that the market be run by EMG Marketing Group and Change Inc. and be held three (!) times a week.

* Mr. T in D.C. bows respectfully to the employees of the Columbia Heights Subway sandwich shop:

I just wanted to thank them here today. By now, all the employees there recognize me, and know what kind of sandwich I usually get. . . . The two women who work there on weekday evenings are particularly helpful and pleasant. They recently told me they were from Eritrea; I wonder what their lives were like there? It's not very far from lawless, violent places like Darfur and Somalia.

And in this newspaper:

* Arthur Delaney on D.C. Jail disaster readiness, terrorist threats, and the power of Google.

* Tim Carman tries to make a bagel, lies to City Paper staff.

* Mike DeBonis on the Nat's stadium slush fund.

* ... and the debut of Orr Shtuhl's Beerspotter!

Image courtesy pingnews.

- As Obama clinches the nomination, Slate catches up on the Biden ring tones. They've got "articulate and bright and clean" as well as the old favorite, "You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."

- Sick of the 'ol convention twitter feed? Brightest Young Things is still live-blogging Project Runway.

- Behold: The Secret History of Pop Cesspool, Volume Eight. This time, P.C. engages in some mid-80's clandestine pool jukeboxing.

- All Our Noise give us a back-to-school playlist inspired by Buffy.

- The Post's Laura Yao critiques "The Re-Education of Women," a new "guide to men" written by area man Dante Moore. "Maybe feminism is dead," writes Yao, who fits in a number of funny Moore anecdotes before the kicker: "And so it is that in this messed-up world where relationships between men and women are plagued by misunderstandings, we are all to take lessons from a man who says his best decision as a teenager was to stop treating women well."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Rosenbaum's thesis, such as it is, is that people who do such puzzles are somehow doing harm to their own intelligence. To argue this point, he opens with the deadliest lede in creation, then frosts this dry cupcake with punny sprinkles for us to gag on:

Doing puzzles reflects not an elevated literary sensibility but a degraded letter-ary sensibility

What are some of the other defenses of the puzzle people? "It trains the mind.".... I'd say that instead it drains the mind.

Rosenbaum's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer shtick would be funny if he revealed any effort to actually understand what he's discussing. He picks up a copy of Will Shortz' Funniest Crossword Puzzles, then expresses bafflement because he read the first five clues and didn't crap himself with laughter. [Nerd hat on]To the extent crosswords are funny, the humor is in the answers to the themed clues.[Nerd hat off] Later, Rosenbaum congratulates himself on his intellectual superiority after watching a fellow working a crossword that has the clue "Mauna ___." "Whew, though one, dude," bleats Rosenbaum. [Nerd hat on]The answer could be either LOA or KEA, and it's perfectly sensible to delay filling out the answer there.[Nerd hat off]

The running theme in Rosenbaum's piece is that people who do puzzles could better spend their time reading. "Need I suggest that those who spend time doing crossword puzzles (or sudoku)...could be doing something else that involves words and letters? It's called reading," he writes. (Here's a fun puzzle: Imagine you're Ron Rosenbaum and try to write about something without egregiously overusing italics. If you can do it, you win!) Is it too much to ask that reporters writing a piece spend a little time doing more research before embarrassing themselves in public? Rosenbaum, surely tugging on his suspenders as he guffaws, notes that the Times crossword offers a toll number for people to call to "buy a clue." This is the Comstock Lode of pun-rich hilarity to him. "But couldn't it be said that even people who don't have to buy a clue, but spend their time pursuing clues to the meaningless puzzles, are clueless?"

Oh, Ron. Just drop me a line. I'll clue you in for free.

* Upset the Setup gets upset at the hip-hop scene over at Chief Ike's.

* In Shaw gives D.C. a housing pop quiz: Can you tell what year this report on D.C.'s housing problems was written?

* All Our Noise marks the album birthday of The Ramones' Adios Amigos. The record is now 13. Is this really cause for celebration? Whatever ... at least there are sombrero dinos.

* Listen up, John McCain: Mr. T in D.C. tells you how to know when you're officially old. The incontrovertible evidence:

For decades, I've consistently disliked dried fruit: raisins, craisins, prunes, you name it ... All of a sudden, I've discovered a newfound taste for dried fruit ... I'm snacking on raisins as we speak! I keep a box in my desk for when I get hungry, and at home I've been experimenting with those more upscale, resealable packs of dried fruit. I've tried out a couple of different kinds of raisins, dried mango, pineapple, dates, and have a bag of dried blueberries I'm dying to open ... I may even try the ultimate in geezer confirmation fruit: prunes.

* Slate's Christopher Beam imagines alternate scenarios that would explain John Edwards' alleged late-night visit to his alleged lover and their alleged love-child. My favorite:

Edwards had come to return Hunter’s sari, which she had left the time he came to return her bomber jacket, which she had left the time he came to return her charm bracelet, which she had left the time he came to return her first edition of Pulp’s His and HersDifferent Classes, which she had left on the campaign bus in Reno.

Photo by NCinDC

* Good morning! Slate's got all your military sleep-reduction news.

* The Brightest Young Things discuss when rompers go wrong.

* Mr. T in D.C. sets some rules for TV watching at the gym. In: CNN and 80's music videos. Out: Entertainment Tonight and Fox News. This writer humbly submits the perfect gym entertainment: Discovery Channel's Cash Cab.

* The Post has a great profile of the man accused of stealing a rare Shakespeare first folio from the University of Durham:

Scott, a tall, thin man, has never really had a job, but he said his mother (whom he referred to at one point as "Lady Bountiful") bankrolls his trips---and his gold Versace ring, his diamond Rolex and a succession of exquisite cars: a Rolls-Royce, an Aston Martin, a Lamborghini, a silver Ferrari.

Speaking in a hotel with a plate of langoustines in front of him---lobsters couldn't be found---Scott said he remembered the moment he realized how much better the best was. He was 18, and he had slipped his feet into handmade Italian leather shoes.

* Tonight's picker-uper: Lenny Campello of Daily Campello Art News will give a talk tonight at 5:30 p.m. at Smith Farm's Healing Arts Gallery on Frida Kahlo and pain.

Photo by Mr. T in D.C.