Hall of Shame: Mickey Loomis Apologist Andrus Whitewing
Saintsreport.com run by Andrus Whitewing holds an important position of responsibility in the Saints Fan community calling itself 'the premier fan site of the New Orleans Saints.' Unfortunately this positions has been abused to prop up the Mickey Loomis regimes worst mistakes. Saints Report practices a policy of silent bans where long time members are suddenly and regularly disappeared from their site with no explanation or notice to other members. After over 15 years as as a member of the site, going back to its past as ironera.com under Mike Ditka's Saint's regime, I was suddenly banned from SaintsReport.com with a broken 3 sentence message calling me a "Negative Nancy" and characterizing my arguments against Loomis as "trolling" when they just represented a different opinion now shared by many fans.
The chilling effect of Andrus Whitewing's policies is to create a false sense of support for Mickey Loomis' tired regime. Not only are critics removed, but average fans even questioning Loomis go to the most popular Saints forum and see what appears to be popular support for Loomis. Seeing this they feel they are alone, keep their thoughts to themselves, and lose access to a community where they might be able to advocate for change, so less new critics arise. Meanwhile ultra-pro-Loomis rose colored glasses optimists go to SaintsReport.com and feel confident to go to the water cooler at work and spout to everyone that will hear it that Mickey Loomis and Khai Hartley are cap wizards and this our year with future Hall of Famer Derek Carr. "Keep doing what your doing" is the mantra of both SaintsReport.com and Dennis Allen. Through years of silencing Mickey Loomis's critics for him, Andrus Whitewing has sheltered Mickey Loomis from countless actual and would be critics, and been a driving force in creating the Saints front office and staff culture of megalomania where 'we can do no wrong' and 'every excuse is good.' Sometimes a good round of criticism wakes people up, but Whitewing has made sure Mickey Loomis could stay asleep at the wheel for the last 5+ years.
Andrus Whitewing's personal and financial relationships with Mickey Loomis are unknown at this time. When asked to comment on how many members he has banned for some form of 'negativity' Whitewing provided no reply. One is left to speculate that perhaps Whitewing has a soft spot in his heart for Mr. Loomis and expects that a rose colored optimistic fan forum will bring him the most profit, maybe he is even a rosie himself and maybe he finds Mr. Loomis to be a 'handsome man.' But alternately a person could also speculate that running a website is expensive, access and perks are valuable, and perhaps at some point Andrus Whitewing came to a handshake agreement with Mickey Loomis to help censor criticism. After all, Mickey Loomis benefits the most from the self proclaimed "Premier Fan Site of the New Orleans Saints" silently banning many of his critics and exaggerating his support among fans. Mickey Looomis would be in a position to compensate Andrus Whitewing and his site in many ways: direct financial inducements, media access, special perks and access at team events, and by allowing the forum to appear more like an official Saints website. For example, SaintsReport.com has seemingly been allowed to prominently feature the Saints logo and an image of the Superdome atop its website banner as well as feature the Saints name in its web address. By contrast, a smaller Saints forum BlackandGold.com that has historically allowed more criticism of the Saints front office and features a smaller and oddly mis-shapen Saints-like logo modified to something like the shape of a bird and uses a general name refering only to the Saints team colors. While the blackandgold.com bird logo appears to skirt copyright, the SaintsReport logo seems confident to fly in the face of copyright. That confidence might be gained by an understanding, in return for silencing critics.
While we can never know how many critics SaintsReport.com has silently banned over the years, we can look at why they banned me 5 years ago and how Andrus replied when I tried to rejoin recently to post an open letter, in light of the fact that many of my criticisms of Loomis have proved to be true:
It's interesting how Andrus seems to take criticism of Mickey Loomis so personally that he feels the need to call an approximately 15 year member of his forum names and make personal insults. But the most interesting part is the line "we don't need any more of that." This is the person controlling the 'premier fan site of the New Orleans Saints' and apparently there are certain things he 'needs' posted and certain things he 'needs' not to be posted, and he 'needs' to be the one controlling the discussion by banning people. But he doesn't say 'he needs' it, he says 'we need' it. Either 'we' means he thinks he speaks for all other Saints fans, or 'we' means himself and his 'dear friend' Mickey Loomis who has protected tirelessly for many years.
Of course, SaintsReport is currently filled with exactly the sort of 'negativity' Andrus doesn't think 'we' 'need' but that is very hard to avoid with this year's performance and the disaster of a salary cap situation the Saints have got themselves into to buy the next Drew..... Bledsoe. We can't expect Andrus to ban half the forum overnight. But from his rejection of me, it is clear he does not want to clear the air and welcome other opinions, he still wants to protect Loomis. So, it would be reasonable to expect that Andrus is working daily to slowly cull the forum of the loudest voices of dissent, until inevitably in the offseason the Saints have to make a decision on Mickey Loomis, Dennis Allen, and Derek Carr and magically by then enough 'negative' members will be banned that the consensus will conveniently be that the regime deserved another chance and they are really starting to make the changes needed to turn things around.
What can you do? If you are a member of SaintsReport.com, quit. Or better yet, post a thread calling for Mickey Loomis to be fired, linking to my site, or asking how many members have been banned for disagreeing with Andrus. Then he will quit you himself. You are not seeing any truth on that site, only what Andrus Whitewing decides you 'need' to see. He will prop up this regime for as long as it lasts, and the second it ends, just like ironera.com, he will be the #1 fan and supporter of the next regime even if they bring back Trevor Semian as the starting QB and trade our 1st round pick to draft a punter. If the next regime succeeds we will both be fans, but if it takes a wrong turn Andrus will start banning members again to prop it up for as long as he can. It's what he does, and it has worked for him for years. There are better sites out there. Blackandgold.com won't ban people for differences of opinion. You will see a lot more 'negativity' on blackandgold, facebook, Reddit, and anywhere else you look because they are not walled gardens propping up the current regime at all costs. Don't participate in a forum that is built on censorship and secrecy. Quit Andrus!