Roger Clemens took the stand in a Congressional probe on the use of steroids in baseball and flagrantly, obviously lied his ass off.
What do Roger Clemens and Snooki from “The Jersey Shore” have in common? They’ve both been charged with being a nuisance to the public.
Sure, the scales (and the stakes) are much different. Snooki was charged with being drunk and annoying in public, falling on her face and basically bothering people, and faces a fine of up to $2,000. Clemens was charged with obstructing justice in a Congressional hearing, lying on the stand, and faces up to 30 years in jail and $1.5 million in fines.
But in essence, the charges here are the same. No one cares about Roger Clemens having done drugs, they only care about him lying on the stand and basically being an asshole and a public nuisance. U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen drove the point home Thursday, saying, “Our government cannot function if witnesses are not held accountable for false statements made before Congress.”
The irony here of course is that Clemens’s honesty on the stand has far eclipsed the original crime in question. In 2008 former teammate Any Pettitte admitted to having done steroids, and he’s not facing any 30 years. Andre Agassi admitted to doing crystal meth in his autobiography, “Open.” He’s not taking the stand, doing jail time, facing any charges—hell, no one’s even retroactively stripping his trophies for poor behavior. No one cares.
But Clemens had to lie about it. To Congress. Not only that, but Clemens asserted under oath that his trainer Brian McNamee, who had confessed to administering the drugs to Clemens, was lying in his confession—and he had the balls to suggest on the stand that Andy Pettitte was lying in his confession to having used steroids. “I think he (Pettitte) misremembers,” Clemens said.
Of course, an even larger issue at hand is the curiosity of Congress probing the ethics of professional sports. It’s always reminded me of the Congressional hearing on quiz shows in the 1950s. Shouldn’t the top-level legal proceedings in our country be concerned with more important things than ballplayers and game show hosts? What about terrorists, unemployment and healthcare—just a few suggestions.
Plus, it’s not like ballplayers’ salaries are paid through taxes. What would happen if Congress started a probe into “performance enhancing drugs” in the world of professional rock and roll? Hey, I’m not saying that every high-school kid with a decent fastball and a set of ambitions should start hitting the sauce, but I am saying that if the Beatles had never discovered LSD they never would have made “Sgt. Pepper’s.”
Would you want to be stuck with an entire back catalog of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand?” Me neither. Sometimes the world needs performance enhancing drugs, and sometimes you gotta live and let live.
Clemens was an idiot to think that he could lie egregiously on the the stand before Congress and have no one notice, or care. But Congress is equally absurd in spending so much time investigating baseball in the first place.
