Washington Redskins owner David Brent

Update: Dan Snyder is maybe not the nicest and coolest guy to ever run a football team.

In his latest public relations masterstroke, the Redskins owner (who may as well be Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life” at this point) has ordered The Washington Post to change the name of its “Redskins Insider” blog because they don’t have a contract or pay the organization to use the name.  The famous blog that covers the Redskins will be refferred to as “Football Insider,” at least until The Insider sues them and they end up as “Sport Blog.”

Yesterday, The Post’s Paul Farhi provided an explanation:  The Redskins, who have been at the forefront in creating their own multimedia operations, have been aggressive in policing the use and misuse of their “brand” by others.  How do you solve this problem?  By Googling “Wasington+Redskins+fans” and emasculating all four of the links that pop up.  This is especially tough news for Native Americans, who will now have to co-opt “honky” as their racial epithet of choice.

Ask fans of any sports team that has ever existed, and they will tell you invariably that their owner is crazy and the worst, and that they will never win a championship until said person is fired.  I’m as guilty of this as the next guy, but at least I can rest comfortably knowing Larry Dolan will never barge in on me in the middle of dinner and sue me for wearing an Indians hat without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball.

Coming as a shock to the hundred of fans of his radio show, Tony Kornheiser took a brief break from discussing American Idol. This momentous shift in programming was done so he could announce that he was the latest of dozens of employees that have taken the voluntary buyout from The Washington Post, that redoubtable money-bleeding newspaper he's pretended to write for the last few years.

"All I ever wanted to be was a newspaper writer," he said, which is likely not something that anyone under the age of 30 will ever say again. "This other stuff is great, but I don't care about it," he continued. "In my mind that's what it says on the headstone, it says 'newspaper guy.' "

Awful touching for a guy whose paychecks all now say "radio guy," "TV bloviator," and "Monday Night Football's top Tom Brady fluffer". Not wanting to startle listeners too much, he mixed in his plaintive memories of when The Post mattered with, hey!, Idol.

"There was not enough wine in the world, there wasn't, not last night," he said. "I'm watching 'Idol,' and I'm thinking about all these things, and I don't know who I'm supposed to talk to about this….It just feels odd. It feels odd and it feels bad. It doesn't feel sad, there's no sadness to it, it just feels wrong."

Wow. What a profound loss. Readers will surely miss the two paragraphs he'd toss off for page 2 of the sports section every few days. Or the humorously annotated NCAA bracket every March. I worked for the paper for three years and I never once so much as glimpsed the guy at the office. But he was a presence, boy howdy. Now that damn Paul Farhi can write vapid pieces in the Style section without any fear of reprisal.

In news about people didn't wait 10 years too long to retire: Annika Sorenstam is calling it quits at the end of the year (Oh yeah, and Justine Henin). If you get bored, Annika, you can probably talk golf on a TK's show, so long as you laugh at everything he says and limit any non-Idol discussion to 30 seconds. Were you on Idol, by the way?