John Blanchette: Hearings nothing more than a waste
Here’s what we do:
Roger Clemens doesn’t get into the Hall of Fame. Even if he didn’t get himself injected with steroids, Human Growth Hormone or 10W30 – and after Wednesday’s Congressional burlesque we should be more convinced than ever that he did – just employing a sleazoid like Brian McNamee should keep him out of Cooperstown. At least Barry Bonds had the sense to hire a trainer who could keep his pie hole shut.
McNamee, meanwhile, is hereby sentenced to host “Sit and Be Fit” for the rest of his days, and enduring fraternity hazings from Dan Burton and Christopher Shays on alternating nights.
And those two not-very-honorable Congressmen and the other 39 members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform get herded onto a bus and transported to the nearest waterboarding facility, or perhaps just off an unfinished overpass. Whichever figures to be more painful.
Except maybe Virginia Foxx. Even though the Republican representative from North Carolina doesn’t know if a baseball is covered with horsehide or horseapples, and couldn’t have been more solicitous of Clemens had she tucked him in for a nap after the proceedings, Foxx was still the closest thing to a heroine to be had at Rocketgate.
“I think we’ve been playing ‘gotcha’ games and I don’t agree with that,” she said. “I think there are billions of dollars being wasted every minute by the federal government and what this committee ought to be doing is government oversight – and we’re not doing that.”
Can we get an amen?
Can we get an immediate recall on the committee’s chair, Henry Waxman of California, and the ranking minority member, Tom Davis of Virginia, for a dizzying misappropriation of power?
Can we get a clue that none of us is going to be able to afford health insurance in 10 years because our elected goobers are otherwise engaged debating the whys and wherefores of a “palpable mass” on the buttock of a self-absorbed puke like Roger Clemens?
And while we’re on the subject of palpable masses, let’s not forget Clemens’ reptilian attorneys, Lanny Breuer and Rusty Hardin.
In the spirit of justice and cooperation, these $900-an-hour officers of the court had Clemens’ nanny over to the pitcher’s house so he and his investigators could massage her story about Clemens’ attendance – or lack thereof – at a party at Jose Canseco’s home at which something nefarious was alleged to have occurred. This nanny-Clemens meeting occurred before they turned her name and contact information over to the House committee, as it requested.
“I was trying to do y’all a favor,” Clemens claimed.
That was just the beginning of the vaudeville, and it pretty much never stopped.
Canseco contributed an affidavit stating Clemens hadn’t attended the party. Given that the nanny testified otherwise, this was a great boost to Clemens, unless you consider the level of desperation which exists to ask Mr. Juiced to be your alibi.
We had to hear about Clemens bleeding through the butt of his dress pants, blaming his mom recommending those B-12 shots McNamee denied administering, and Clemens’ wife Debbie dropping trou for the trainer in the master bedroom for her dose of HGH – somehow unbeknownst to hubby. Just a guess, but this probably derails her Hall of Fame candidacy, too, despite that Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot.
Not to interrupt the important stuff, Congressmen, but any chance this Iraq business might make your radar?
If there are clear inconsistencies to McNamee’s story, there is not the logical disconnect exposed in Clemens’ denial Wednesday when his buddy and teammate Andy Pettitte’s deposition was opened. In it, he reiterated that he had used HGH and that Clemens had admitted to using it, too. Clemens protested that Pettitte had “misremembered.” At which point Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland dropped the hammer.
“When Mr. McNamee gave his testimony about (Chuck) Knoblauch and Pettitte, those allegations turned out to be true,” he said. “But for some reason, when it comes to you, it’s a whole ‘nother thing. How do you explain this?”
And Clemens couldn’t.
Any more than the committee can explain why our tax dollars need to be put to work to settle a hissing match between sewer snakes.
“The only reason we held this hearing today is because Roger Clemens insisted on it,” Davis said.
Well, that’s not good enough. If Clemens wants to clear his name, let him spend his fortune in civil court doing so. Like the Mitchell Report itself, this achieved nothing but to give baseball another slime bath and to allow political hacks to split down predictable party lines and preen for TV with a baseball star in the house – while the subprime continues its death spiral.
Here’s one other thing we do: Strip commissioner Bud Selig and union chief Donald Fehr naked and handcuff them to each other in an apiary, for it was their footdragging on a decent drug policy which got Congress involved in the first place.
There. That should take care of the whole palpable mass.