Like many men, I watch or read sports for some
relief from the pressures of career and life. Sport jettisons up no painful
to-do item; nor does it generate anxiety, despair or revulsion as does most everything else in the news.
Last week, however, sport offered no escape. Rather, we were treated
to Roger Clemens' baldfaced, brazen, utterly ludicrous lies under oath before a
congressional committee, the Republican half of which nevertheless fawned over
him and rabidly attacked his accuser. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) brought out a
large poster with Clemens action photos and at hearing’s end, she was fatuously
touching Clemens' arm and shaking his hand.
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It’s hard to portray the extent of the deceit. I have no comparison
or analogy I could draw except for other political hearings. And, alas, it is
mostly all I’ve seen of politics
since I’ve been paying close attention the past few years. The reality of US politics
is actually much worse even than even the most vicious satires. This is not
the “ethical flexibility” exercised by the tobacco lobbyist in the excellent
film, Thank You for Smoking. Rather, rise to power in this country seems based almost exclusively on
willingness to lie without any reservation, no matter how absurd,
unethical, or inconsistent. It’s a
contest in which the lobbyist and the film's other “Merchants of Death”
would be
quickly eliminated for any semblance, however warped, of truth, ethics,
and internal consistency. Clemens, like Bush, is
his own satire: Truth be damned, scruples be damned, logic be damned -- and the public be damned.
My question is: Are these the standard
time-honored rules of politics or are just the (temporary) rules of an extremely corrupt regime?
I’d like to believe the latter, but it sure would be comforting to
see someone occasionally pay for such damnation. Perhaps a lawyer can comment
on this, but Clemens seemed to perjure himself at various points. For example,
after denying many times that he attended a particularly infamous Jose Canseco barbecue/steroid
shoot-up, he decided that maybe he did
stop by after all. (Unless I "misheard" him or "misremembered this testimony.)
On a positive note, one big difference about the lies – and truth – in this
testimony and those of say, testimony about voting practices or election
“irregularities”: The press actually reported what happened, called a spade
a spade, and even went ahead and made the appropriate judgments. See virtually
any of the reports in Sports
Illustrated’s coverage.
Which leads to a second question: Could the sports-mad public be our
breakthrough audience? A few months ago, Jon Simon wrote to me:
… sick as our national
sports/winning obsession is, I have long felt that it holds a potential key to
breakthrough on election theft. What are elections if not the ultimate sport
(they are certainly treated as such by the MSM)?
With cheating/corruption making recurrent headlines in virtually
every major sport (NASCAR, MLB, NFL, NBA, Tour de France, Olympics. . .), the
obvious analogy is there. The cheating has been exposed by a combination of
'insiders' like Jose Canseco, circumstantial evidence (lots of long home runs,
bloated heads, super-fast lap times are a lot like the 'shocking anomalies' in
our recent elections) and the need for the poobahs who run these sports to
restore their integrity in light of suspicions and declining fandom by
supporting serious forensic investigation like blood and urine samples, etc.
Where is all of this part of the daily conversation?? Sports-talk
radio (and TV), that's where!! That would be the first audience that, despite relative right-wing leaning,
might actually GET IT about elections.
I wonder if I could get my question past the 'screener' (if you
don't ask what you say you're going to ask they blow you up and won't let you
back on, so you kind of have to be honest)…The question would be something to
the effect of "We see that, when the stakes are high, athletes cheat until
they are caught. What about control of a $12 trillion economy and the world's
biggest arsenal? How's that for stakes? There's at least as much evidence of
election theft as there is of steroid use and other forms of cheating in
sports. Do we want to get to the bottom of it, or are we willing to see
insiders determine who rules America,
just like Balco was determining who won ballgames and set records?"
This is a HUGE audience, the very people who GET that competitors
will CHEAT. Why shouldn't we take advantage
of America's
sports obsession to break through to this enormous sector of the public about
the great sport of electoral politics and the computerized steroids now
determining the score?! Thoughts?--Jonathan
More than 25,000 people answered
the Sports Illustrated survey on the testimony; virtually no one supporting Clemens. But even if we could reach this
audience, could they be moved? Or are they aggressively avoiding real life? For
that matter, what is the relationship between national politics and real life?
Are we supposed to be so disgusted by it that we turn it off? Perhaps
Clemens testimony is the perfect punctuation marking retirement as pro athlete and
birth as a Republican Party politician. The not so subtle message: Watch sports to escape from hell; enter
politics to be thrust into it.
