Contempt of Congress

People have been making fun of me for the past fifteen years for watching C-SPAN. Yesterday, I am sure the viewing audience reached unprecedented levels when Roger Clemens appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

I've tried to look through all of this with unbiased eyes and I cannot. In my eyes, he's a Texan, a Longhorn, and a Yankee. Of course he's innocent.

I readily admit to being a Clemens fan although I don't particularly like him.

He's arrogant, he's pompous, he's unforgiving, and he doesn't know how to back down from a confrontation. While those personality traits may make him difficult to live with (just ask my wife), they are the same traits that make him the great baseball player he is today.

I have no business conferring guilt or its opposite (which isn't innocence). Unless I witness an event for myself, I already have enough initial suspicion of its actual occurence.

Still, I offer the following:

Clemens is not guilty:

The evidence against him is offered by two people: a criminal who has a checkered past of lying to investigators, telling half-truths, and misrepresenting his own intentions; and a former teammate and current best friend who attempted to accurately recall a conversation from half a dozen years ago.

Regardless, Clemens had ample time and opportunity to issue a non-apology apology like Giambi, a full-blown apology like Pettitte, an apology non-apology like Canseco, or an apology-in-a-vacuum like McGuire. He didn't take any of these tines in the forked road and stubbornly stuck to the I-Never-Used story.

I can almost understand lying during an investigation. Though they are the same with the exact consequences, lying to an investigator over the phone does not have the same air of seriousness as lying to a congressional committee on live television.

But when Clemens appeared for pre-testimony meetings on the Hill, the chairman of the committee offered to cancel the hearings. Clemens, through his attorney, appealed and insisted on an opportunity to refute those allegations in public under oath.

Only a completely stupid or innocent person asks for that.

Last, Atticus Finch taught the following: "If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

I try to view everything through this prism. I saw myself at that table yesterday being accused of something I did not do and mustering the civility to calmly deny it.

If Waxman ever asked me if I had ever been injected with steroids in the buttocks, I'd let him see for himself and give him the chance to seal it with a kiss.

Clemens is guilty:

Many of Clemens' teammates, who shared the same trainer, have admitted usage. Therefore, he's guilty by association.

Clemens looked nervous and even mispronounced his former trainer's name. Therefore, he's lying and is guilty of perjury.

Clemens is 46 years old with a career E.R.A of 3.12; three of his past four seasons ended with E.R.A.'s under 3.00. Of course he's juiced.

This much I do know:

His reputation has been forever sullied. Cleared or convicted, this is how the much of the public and all of the press will remember him.

And with threatening recession on the brink, during an on-going war from multiple fronts, and with Hezbollah lining up dominoes waiting for an itchy finger, this is what they're discussing?

No wonder their approval rating is lower than Clemens' E.R.A.