It’s just two days before Superbowl Sunday, but Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter held a press conference today to rail against National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell. Specter is criticizing the NFL’s investigation of the New England Patriots after it was discovered early this season that they’d taped the Jets’ defensive signals during games.
Is the recession over already? How else can one explain a U.S. Senator injecting himself into Super Bowl week to stir up an alleged controversy that the 4,500+ credentialed members of the press somehow missed. Spygate is old news. What happened to the tape is even more obscure news. Nary a word about the fate of the spygate tape was raised this week, until today.
This isn’t just another shameless pol looking for free pub. This isn’t about a bitter Philadelphia Eagles fan still smarting over the Pats Superbowl vistory a couple years back. No, this is all about the NFL’s battle with the cable companies over the NFL Network. Specter chose today, the day of the NFL Commissioner’s annual state of the league press conference. That is no coincidence. Specter is trying to publicly browbeat the commish on this Pats issue to gain concessions for his big campaign contributors from Comcast.
It’s not often that a Washington politician is so brazen in their efforts to do the bidding of special interests. Usually, they just add some language in a bill before anyone notices. That’s how the game has been played in Washington for years. Arlen Specter raised, or lowered depending on your perspective, the bar for shamless pandering today.
Does he really think people will believe this is about spygate? I think old Arlen has been drinking too much of that Comcast Kool-Aid, he’s under the impression that the public will be fooled. Not everyone is as slow as The Slowsky’s Arlen.
ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA) Top Contributors
1) Blank Rome LLP: $258,550
2) Comcast Corp: $101,750
I wonder if somebody at Comcast already has another check in the mail?