By Theodore N. Beitchman
I watched Robert Kraft’s ridiculous presser yesterday and thought about Fox News and “The Godfather, Part 2.”
Fox News is based on the concept of phony outrage — The War on Christmas, for instance, which exists only in the addled brain of the brilliant Roger Ailes, Fox News’ chief. There is no such thing but Fox riles up its base with that nonsense anyway.
Kraft is outraged that anyone would think his Patriots would cheat to get an an edge.
One word wipes that away:
Spygate.
And I thought of “The Godfather, Part 2” because Kraft actually demanded an apology from the NFL if its investigators found no “definitive” wrongdoing in the case. Imagine: The league is investigating a potential rule violation, one that nearly everyone in football believes could have impacted the team’s performance in AFC Championship Game, and Kraft already wants to hear two words from Roger Goodell.
“I’m sorry!”
I immediately thought of Tom Hagan, the character played by Robert Duvall, who screamed:
“I demand an apology! I demand an apology!” after his client, Michael Corleone (photo at left) got off scott free at a Senate hearing when a witness changed his testimony.
Bottom line: Everyone knew Corleone was a murderer and a thug, but he got away anyway.
Just like everyone knows the Patriots screwed with the footballs during their AFC title game against the Colts two Sundays ago.
And, just like the Godfather, Kraft and his choir boy Patriots will get away with it.
By the way, what’s with the Patriots and movie references?
Last Friday, coach Bill Belichick confessed that he was not Mona Lisa Vito, the character in “My Cousin Vinny,” who knows everything about air pressure in tires.
“I want to make it clear that I believe unconditionally that the New England Patriots have done nothing inappropriate,” Kraft said, reading from a two-page statement, and then he took it one step further.
Well, if you got busted for cheating once, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt the next time. Kraft should be demanding accountability now for the NFL, not worrying about hurt feelings and damaged reputations. He should be addressing the latest report that casts more questions about the episode, not posturing already about the end game.
He better be right, because the NFL certainly was right to investigate the matter, no matter what you believe did or didn’t happen to those footballs.
The league has zeroed in on a “locker-room attendant,” according to the well-sourced Jay Glazer of Fox Sports, and that he is a “strong person of interest,” and that — somebody get TMZ on this right away — the league “additionally has video.”
Glazer adds the league is “still gauging if any wrongdoing occurred,” but ask yourself this: Is it really that hard to believe that some locker-room flunky dragged the footballs into a stadium bathroom and took a needle to them?
“I’m not a scientist,” Belichick said, but when everyone from Bill Nye the Science Guy to Neil deGrasse Tyson to an actual Wilson Sporting Goods representative declared Belichick’s rambling explanation on Saturday to be utter baloney, he’s got a credibility problem, and as a result so does the NFL.
