Ballghazi, Except With the World Blowing Up

On January 18, 2015, the New England Patriots defeated the Indianapolis Colts 45-7. After the game, the Colts alleged that Patriots were using illegal deflated footballs in the first half, after which New England led 17-7. (In the forthcoming movie Executive Force, written, directed by, and starring Ryan Grigson, we can see a dramatization of the most plausible counterfatual scenario: a heroic general manager named Gyan Rrigson overcomes the bumbling of his sidekick Phuck Cagano and foils the football deflation scheme at the last minute, leading to a 51-3 Colts victory on the pack of 7 rushing TDs by the team’s star running back, Rrent Trichardson. Coming to a taxi in Indianapolis soon.) Even if true, the deflation obviously was not material to the outcome of the game. The NFL, however, manufactured a major scandal by leaking to its stenographers the fiction that 11 footballs used by the Patriots had been found to have been deflated by 2 pounds each. This was complete bullshit — there was no 11 deflated footballs, there was no process to reliably measure the inflation of the footballs, not surprisingly since everyone correctly considered this a trivial issue ex ante, and even had the NFL used a reliable process the deflation that was ultimately alleged to have occurred simply could have been natural deflation. The league, in other words, had no useful evidence that a trivial rules violation had occurred, but by pushing a false narrative through a gullible press they created the impression of serious misbehavior, and ultimately the Patriots lost a first round pick and 4 games of their star QB for an offense that would be worthy of a five-figure fine even if the NFL had actual evidence it had occurred.

In 2016, at least, this ended up not mattering — the Pats will be in the Super Bowl despite this. Alas, the much more important political equivalent of Ballghazi did not have a similar outcome:

It was like a greatest hits list of the Clinton campaign’s setbacks — email security, personal devices and Clinton Inc. — but this time playing out courtesy of Trump’s staff.

First came news, via The New York Times, that the president is still using his personal unsecured Android cellphone — a tough pill to swallow for a campaign staff that was continually hamstrung by concerns over Clinton’s use of BlackBerrys while she was secretary of state.

Next were hints, from Newsweek, that Trump aides were using personal email addresses even after taking White House jobs – another direct echo of GOP criticisms of Clinton’s private email arrangement. The Republican National Committee, which provided the accounts, soon deleted them, the magazine reported. (The White House is pushing back on Newsweek’s story, seeking a retraction. Spokesman Michael Short said, “Newsweek’s story is a work of fiction.”)

And finally on Friday morning news landed from Axios that Jason Miller, a former top Trump communications staffer, had joined Teneo – a consulting firm with close ties to the Clintons that was frequently roped into Republican accusations about the family’s business ties.

Even on the narrow issue of email server management, the Trump administration is far worse. But, of course, now nobody cares. Which makes sense: after all, if you polled the public about what the most important issues facing the country were in 2012, “email management by cabinet officials” wouldn’t make the top 1,000. Email server management would be a trivial issue worthy of minimal-to-no-attention during an ordinary presidential campaign, let alone a presidential campaign in which one candidate shattered every previous standard for unfitness and norm of political behavior. But Republican hacks and a hyperpartisan FBI (up to and including a director who repeatedly violated norms and ethics to ramp up the scandal whenever campaign coverage threatened to focus on something of actual importance) pushed a narrative that Hillary Clinton’s EMAILS! were a yoooge, yoooge scandal, and the media fell for it, devoting an enormous amount of time and space covering a trivial pseudo-scandal and generally not even conveying the facts of the matter correctly.

This could have ended up no-harm, no-foul. Could have, but didn’t. So now an inept white nationalist not chosen by the American people is in position to do incalculable damage, and both the press and the public can go back to not giving a shit about email server management. Heckuva job, everybody.

[Link via nemdam]

…via Tom in comments, Magary sums up Ballghazi perfectly:

GUHHHHHHHH…DeflateGate. Just seeing it mentioned here probably makes you want to climb into a whirlpool of boiling acid, so I’ll keep this brief: there was no clear evidence that Tom Brady deflated balls prior to the 2015 AFC title game, and there was no clear evidence that the balls he used were deflated enough to give him a real advantage. None of that, however, prevented Goodell from picking the smallest possible fight with the league’s biggest possible star, and then putting on his novelty-sized Inspector Javert hat and pursuing it all the way to the outer ends of the legal universe.

Think about the core mentality of someone who does this—someone who runs a dopey sports league but fancies himself Minister of Justice. Now that the scandal is finally over, and Brady has served his time in Roger Jail, it’s worth asking: Did anyone benefit from how this scandal was handled? Is the integrity of the game any better protected for it? Did it make viewers happy? Does Brady feel chastened? Does Goodell think his message has been received? I loathe the Patriots, and even I thought this was a colossal waste of time and resources. Imagine the NBA suspending LeBron for a month for exceeding talcum powder usage guidelines. It’s like Saran-wrapping your own toilet seat.