Nick Wass / AP Photo

When the story first broke that Dan Snyder was considering taking legal action against the ownership of the Washington City Paper, there were a scattered few who wondered whether Snyder was pursuing the suit as some sort of perverse publicity stunt. It doesn’t appear to make a whole lot of sense, I know. But, think about it: we have been talking a whole lot about Dan Snyder in the last couple of weeks — and a piece today by new WaPo sports columnist Jason Reid lends at least a little credence to that theory.

Reid notes that Snyder had to be massaged into filing the lawsuit over Dave McKenna’s “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide To Dan Snyder” by his public relations guru Tony Wyllie:

Snyder rarely singles out individuals in response to reporters’ questions, preferring to reply in umbrella terms like, “it was an organizational decision.” In a phone interview Saturday, Snyder again stressed Wyllie “felt very strongly about this . . . and I went with his advice. It was a tough decision for me to agree and go along with this. He said, ‘Look, you’re going to take a lot of heat temporarily, but you’ve got to do what’s right.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ I went with my guy.”

Wyllie, Reid notes, had been pressing Snyder to open up more to the media since the Redskins owner brought him on after the Jim Zorn disaster in 2009. And they do say that there is no such thing as bad publicity.