Illegal war and bailouts aside, that guy is on steroids!
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
This is a weird country. Actually, it’s not the country itself that’s strange, but the media and the gubment, and their childlike fixation on sex and sports. This was most recently demonstrated in the media-led circuses that broke out post-Tiger Woods extramarital boinking and Mark McGwire’s steroid confession.
The media and the gubment (mubment?) love sports so much that one time the Government Reform Committee held a hearing on steroid use in baseball in 2005, and no one said this was a dumb idea. What the fuck was that? People know this is a sport, right? If a loud five-year-old wandered into the Senate and shouted, “I WANNA HOLD COMMITTEE ON HOW THE CHOO-CHOO RUNS!” people would, rightfully, tell Timmy to shut up, and that Congress is for adult business. Yet, this was okay.
John McCain even said he would introduce legislation imposing drug testing standards on professional athletes if baseball players and owners do not adopt a stringent crackdown on steroids. That’s how mad the government was: they were threatening to regulate business.
If only those dual pillars of distraction could summon the same degree of outrage against Goldman Sachs, or the Bush administration for leading us into war for no good reason.
Now that another sports hero turned out to be human, the mubment is thirsty for sacrificial blood. This was Brian Williams’ opening (the opening, while the US is attacking five Muslim countries and there’s 10% unemployment) for last night’s NBC Nightly News: (h/t Attaturk)
Good evening. Because this is a family broadcast, we probably can’t say what we’d like to about the news today that Mark McGwire—the home run hitter, the family favorite from the St. Louis Cardinals—stopped lying today and admitted that he did it while on steroids.
Big shocker: the guy with biceps the size of my head was juicing! As Scott Bordow wrote in 2005, “Up next: An inquiry into allegations that bowlers like to drink beer.”
Also, where are the screams for justice (from the media and from Washington) in matters of actual concern? Where are the committees and media-issued slammings for Iraq, torture, and the bailouts?
Of course, it is possible that the mubment is so inept (and they know it) that they realize they’re supposed to be monitoring something, and since it can’t possibly be the banks, business, or the military, it’s gonna be baseballz.
The rich are looting taxpayers’ pockets and there’s five wars against Muslim countries, increasing our risk of blowback exponentially… Quick: Point the camera at the dude with the big arms!!!
Politicians always mask their secret desires to see their favorist baseball players appear before them at Committee with the claim that they’re really concerned by the health effects of steroids, or as this blogger put it
a man who is already a far outlier on the curve of human physical development wishes to shrink his balls and grow his boobs in order to swat a ball farther and with more frequency (h/t Greenwald)
Yet, the health effects of illegal war, torture, and wealth disparity don’t concern them so much. What is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia (not to mention what’s happening domestically with the bailouts) is of far greater importance.
These latter events actually jeopardize America’s national security. Wasting time and resources on pursuing the details of how some dude shrank his nuts isn’t just a joke — it’s a crime. As politicians and the media dally in these kinds of stories, the real criminals — the ones who led America to war and stole taxpayer money — are getting away.
Mark McGwire is paraded in front of the cameras as “The Bad Man,” but Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, and former Vice-President Dick Cheney will never, ever be asked to testify before a committee. And that’s really the two-tier system of justice at work. The petty crimes get prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, absorbing all mubment’s time and energy, while the Crimes of the Century go unpunished.
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
Someone’s going to make a million billion dollars when they create an “enhancement legal” baseball league. After all, cyborg and genetic technologies aren’t going to be any easier to ban than steroids.
And you’re right… this is a complete distraction.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by allisonkilkenny, allisonkilkenny, allisonkilkenny, allisonkilkenny, Swat Crisis and others. Swat Crisis said: #swat Illegal war and bailouts aside, that guy is on steroids! – True/Slant http://bit.ly/7riUrT [...]
Bob McChesney raised a similar point in “The Political Economy of the Mass Media” when he devotes an entire chapter to an analysis of sports coverage in the mainstream media. His thesis is that sports receive an amount of coverage disproportionate to their significance in the media because athletics holds a broad appeal but does not threaten the interests of the ruling class. Therefore, sports coverage is an excellent way to boost readership without raising any significant controversies or offending the media’s most important customers, corporate advertisers.
It didn’t take long for the politicians to catch on to this one, and pretty soon you have, as you point out, a hearing on steroid use in baseball while the government continues to wage war on five different Muslim countries and deny adequate health care to a huge proportion of its population. Politicians can demonstrate their piety by delivering eloquent orations on the evils of steroids and their use by professional athletes without having to worry about offending the pharmaceutical, gun, pro-Israel, or just about any other lobbies. Given the options, any smart politician would pick Mark McGwire’s drug use over, say, a woman’s right to an abortion or an investigation into the ways that the CIA has been torturing its victims. It is precisely the fact that the ramifications of such a scandal in professional athletics are so trivial that ensures it will be a center of attention in both the media and the “mubment.”
As a general rule, the amount of coverage an issue receives from politicians and media pundits is inversely proportional to its significance to the lives of the majority of the population.
Well put, Allison. A little more about our government at work. McCain was on the Commerce Committee that gave us the Drug and Dietary Supplement Education Act, courtesy of Orrin Hatch, back in 1994. This little bill allows unscrupulous supplement makers to put steroids, amphetamines, cocaine and other illicit drugs in their product and straight onto the shelves at your local GNC and other “health food” stores. FDA approval is no longer required, and the agency only comes into play after reports of ill affects from consumers.
Here’s McCain in 2004 talking about the bill he helped pass: “I’m not satisfied at all. The bill I voted for, frankly, I was not as aware of it as I should have been. It’s incomprehensible to me that we would not have a provision that would require them to report adverse reactions.”
George Mitchell was the Senate Majority Leader when DSHEA was passed. He offered a lame apology for not paying enough attention to the bill in the Mitchell Report ion 2007, where he also cited several studies indicating steroids were being stuffed into legal supplements.
So, it turns out our government is responsible for putting steroids into the hands of our nation’s teenagers.
By they way, did I mention that the supplement industry is headquartered in Utah, and that Hatch is the biggest recipient of its political donations? Or that his son was a lobbyist for the industry? Or that the only place you can still buy the amphetamine Ephedra legally is Utah? Or that the bill passed the Senate 100-0, and turned a $700 million industry into a $20 billion-plus industry?
So, yes, let’s make sure that Mark McGwire apologizes again and again while we ignore the real problems.