Shh! Don’t Mention The 4,000 Dead Soldiers In Iraq

Today, King Kaufman hits the nail on the head. If you’ll allow me to crudely paraphrase his point - “What the fuck is Congress doing spending all day with Roger Clemens?” Although I am loathe to speak for one of my favorite writers:

Whether McNamee's specific statements about Clemens are true or not is, as one committee member pointed out, important to Clemens and McNamee, but not so important in the scheme of things. If Clemens were somehow proved pure as the new-mown infield grass, it wouldn't mean that baseball's drug problem were any less serious. If a video of him shooting HGH in his butt were to surface, it wouldn't mean baseball's drug problem were any worse.

If Clemens is guilty of a crime, let him stand trial in court, where there are standards of evidence and he has the right to face and cross-examine his accusers. If the House Oversight Committee is going to try to make policy to tackle the drug problem in sports, let it get down to business instead of grandstanding by acting as a kangaroo court.

We all know why they’re really doing this. A) It’s uncontroversial. No one’s going to lose an election being anti-steroids. And B) This gets the committee off of C-SPAN and live on ESPN. If you value your health and well-being then you know to never, ever get between a congressman and a camera. But still, this is our tax money, yours and mine, and we’re spending it trying to figure out whether a single person, who happens to have been a world-class asshole his entire career, is lying about taking some drugs once. Holy fucking shit.

I guess there is one good thing to have come of it. Roger Clemens is the planet’s biggest douchebag, but also probably its best ever pitcher. If this keeps him out of the (increasingly irrelevant) Hall of Fame, maybe it’ll all be worth it.