Recent events compel me to again write in defense of Deshaun Watson and to call for a lot more critical thinking about the recent blast of obviously coordinated propaganda from corporate media on this—including last weekend’s HBO “Real Sports” feature, Tuesday’s New York Times report on details from the discovery process in the civil cases recently released by the parties’ attorneys, and yesterday’s announcement by the accusers’ attorney Tony Buzbee, which was uniformly printed by national outlets including ESPN and USA Today without any critical analysis, that he would be adding the Houston Texans organization as a defendant in many of his clients’ two dozen sex-abuse lawsuits against Watson.
It’s disappointing (if unsurprising) to see so many folks taken in by the outrage machine on this because it doesn’t take much deeper of a look to reasonably see this as nothing more than an attorney, Buzbee, increasingly desperate to save his collapsing smear campaign after two grand juries declined to indict Watson based on his clients’ accusations. These accusations are similarly unlikely to hold up in civil court, so Buzbee’s only move is to keep trying to smear Watson in the court of public opinion.
First, it should be noted that the current cycle of corporate press on this, like all previous coverage, completely fails to account for the incentives the Texans owners (and the NFL owner/oligarch class more broadly) have to smear Watson. I went into some detail on that a few months ago here, but to briefly refresh your memory:
Right before the accusations from Buzbee’s clients began to surface in February of 2021, Watson and the Texans organization were embroiled in another massive headline-dominating controversy. This was over Watson—who was universally beloved by fans in Houston and league-wide after four years as the Texans QB, had just signed a hugely lucrative contract, and had star power that was unprecedented in league history for a young black quarterback—very publicly trying to force his way out of town due to highly controversial actions by the Texans owners that were creating the reasonable perception that they were racist. At this time, Watson was exercising his dissenting voice so effectively that the Washington Post ran a piece on the “resulting discord” within the Texans organization titled, “Deshaun Watson is taking a stand against disingenuous NFL owners.” This report credited Watson for having sparked “a player awakening that owners should acknowledge and respect rather than trivialize the men who enliven the sport.” It also described the Texans organization as “dysfunctional,” “particularly unstable,” and characteristic of “the NFL’s preset dehumanization.” Watson, in contrast, is described in this report as “thinking deeply about systemic inequality” and “want[ing] to be as far away from the Texans as he can get.” This was an unprecedented PR nightmare and disaster for the Texans owners, and to some extent NFL owners as a class, that happened to conveniently evaporate as the sex-abuse accusations started being lobbed by Buzbee, whose Houston mansion is next door to that of the Texans’ owners.
Which is to say that there’s plenty of reason to see this story as being much bigger than just one star player on one football team, and more about the ruling class’s ability to snuff out any dissenting voice that’s strong enough to threaten the balance of power between owners and laborers, which is exactly what Watson had done with his dissenting voice in Houston. This certainly is plenty to explain corporate media’s complicity in a witch-hunt here, completely apart from the clicks this sensational and lurid story drives.
And after two grand juries declined to indict Watson, this of course compounded the disaster for Buzbee and the beneficiaries of this witch-hunt. Hence, the current press blitz to try and kill Watson with another thousand desperate cuts in the court of public opinion. So now take a closer look at what these reports actually say because the narrative they are pushing doesn’t stand to the slightest of scrutiny:
First, even with the allegations of the new 24th accuser and additional anonymous sources quoted in these reports, the fact remains that only two or three of these accusers are even alleging any actual physical contact at all. And even these don’t include any allegations of rape or violence. Even if one were to believe all of the allegations against Watson, the most you have is that he was a sex addict or sex pest who was aggressive about trying to pay “masseuses” for sex.
Which goes to the especially remarkable fact, completely ignored in the corporate press, that the most that any of these two dozen accusers would be able to recover in a civil jury trial, even if a jury entirely believed them, would be somewhere in the four to five-figure range, and likely low five figures at that. So now ask yourself why Tony Buzbee, a lawyer who has won as many gigantic 8 and 9-figure verdicts as almost anyone in the U.S., would be chasing two dozen he-said/she-said sex abuse cases with no allegations of physical violence, realistically worth 4 to 5 figures each at best. The idea that he’s doing this for altruistic reasons is extremely suspect.
Also, of course, the phenomenon of wealthy people, including (perhaps especially) pro athletes, paying for sex – including paying “masseuses” for sex, “happy endings,” etc. — is commonplace, and is almost never prosecuted. Indeed it wasn’t long ago that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft actually was prosecuted for solicitation in a human trafficking sting and not only suffered zero material consequences from it, but also was subject to only a tiny fraction of the public opprobrium Watson is receiving here. Funny how that works (again, of course). The term “lynching” is by no means unfair here, with so many so quick to want to hang a young black star NFL quarterback for being, again, at worst, an aggressive john or sex pest.
Finally, it’s revealing to scrutinize Buzbee’s announcement yesterday that he’s adding the Texans organization as a defendant in many of the sex-abuse cases, based on claims that they enabled Watson’s abuse. This, again, has predictably fooled laypersons reading uncritical reports in the corporate press, but any capable and honest civil lawyer can easily recognize and explain what a ruse this appears to be. So here I go:
Leaving aside how [sarcasm font] terrified the Texans organization must be by two dozen he-said/she-said sex abuse lawsuits, with no allegations of physical violence, and realistic exposure in the 4 to 5 figure range at best; the more important point is that adding the Texans as a defendant can’t reasonably be expected to increase the amounts recoverable by the plaintiffs no matter how a trial were to go for them. This is because, due to the nature of the allegations, there’s no way the plaintiffs could prove the Texans caused them any damage on top of whatever damage they could prove that Watson caused them. And if Watson isn’t found to have caused damage to the plaintiffs, the Texans couldn’t be found liable for assisting him in causing any such damage. So at most the liability would be “joint and several,” meaning that the total amount recoverable is the same, but that Plaintiffs can collect that amount (and only that amount) from either defendant in whatever proportion.
In cases unlike this one, it can be useful for a plaintiff to add a secondarily liable defendant to a suit, as the Texans would be here (assuming these claims were to have any merit), because in many cases the primarily responsible defendant doesn’t have any money to collect. Here that’s obviously not the case. Watson is unquestionably collectible if the Plaintiffs were to get a judgment.
There’s also the fact that adding an institutional defendant to a case like this, particularly one with the means of an NFL franchise and its owners, substantially increases the Plaintiffs’ legal expenses. To do this with no reasonably conceivable gain in expected recovery of course only strengthens the inference that Buzbee has ulterior motives.
All of which goes to show that Buzbee is only adding the Texans as a defendant out of desperation to sentence Watson to death by a thousand cuts in the corporate-dominated court of public opinion; in other words, the only means he has left available to him in the only “court” he could conceivably get a meaningful “win” in.
Not to mention that Buzbee also benefits from deflecting from the inference that he’s running a smear campaign on behalf of the Texans’ owners (his neighbors). Which again simply doesn’t work due to the fact that the Texans’ lack any real exposure in these suits, further revealing this to be an all-too-convenient and transparent cover.
In summary: That there would be diverse reactions to and opinions on this story is of course understandable, only natural, and indeed essential to healthy civic discourse. But all such opinions should account for the incentives—whether acted upon or not—that the ownership class, including the oligarchs who own NFL franchises and the mega-oligarchs who own corporate press, has to smear dissenting voices that operate as powerfully as Watson’s was in the winter of 2021 before these allegations began to surface. These incentives include using the power they have to manipulate narratives to weaponize false accusations of misconduct, including, especially, “he said/she said” allegations of sexual misconduct, which are even easier to weaponize in situations where extremely wealthy and famous celebrities are engaged in the habit of paying for sex. That the corporate-media coverage of this story has been entirely silent on these incentives and the obviously relevant and critical questions raised by the undisputable facts set forth in this post is both predictable and telling of the fact that oligarch-owned media can only reasonably be relied on to produce anti-journalism.
Which is also to say please, don’t “believe women,” and don’t “believe men.” Believe evidence, believe in due process, use your common sense in considering all sides of a dispute no matter the gender of the parties involved, and remember that it’s a good thing that people in the U.S. are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Women lie. Men lie. All kinds of people lie. Especially when they’re paid (or are led to believe they’ll be paid) enough money to lie. Especially when they need money. And even more so when they’re (wittingly or not) under the influence of an oligarch running a smear campaign against a worker who threatens his power. And no matter what your opinions are about an unmarried man paying consenting women for sex, that wouldn’t justify a tiny fraction of what Watson has suffered here. This is, ahem, a “free country.”
