Losing It -- Over Steroids, Emotion, and Hillary Clinton

Roger Clemens

Roger Clemens' performance in his news conference the other day offers yet more evidence about how removed he is from the world that most of us live in, and how little he understands about how fans think about baseball and the world.

He doesn't really understand that by using the passive voice -- "I was told" about Brian McNamee's qualifications to inject him with substances -- he showed just how incurious he was about his trainer, at the same time he wanted us to believe that he cared deeply about how he only cared about the health of his body. When a reported asked a reasonable question about how he accounted for a dramatic improvement from 2000 (13-8 win-loss record) to 2001 (20-3), Clemens lost it, saying, as far as I could tell from the bleeping on my radio, that he "didn't give a rat's ass about records." Come again? The dominant pitcher of the era didn't care about a win-loss record, and only cared about the temple of his body? He actually had the nerve to get indignant on this score!

I don't know how his lawyer could think that Roger would do himself some good by letting his "emotions" show. He thought it was a real zinger to take a swig of water from a bottle and ask the assembled reporters, sarcastically, "Can I drink water?"

After playing the truly bizarre taped conversation with his former trainer, he said "I'd love for him to come down here... I'd be afraid for him." In other words, I'd love to pound the stuffing out of him. At no point, as far as I can tell, did he say, with any kind of authority, it's all wrong, and time will tell and the truth will out. Nor, as Frank Deford pointed out in his NPR commentary this morning, did he answer McNamee's plea for direction with the instruction to "just tell the truth." Most wealthy, top-tier male athletes live in a cocoon of "yes men" (and even more "yes women") and Roger Clemens showed the other day just how thick the walls of his cocoon really are.

Murray Chass

By the way, he doesn't seem to be alone. The normally even-tempered Murray Chass of the New York Times has also lost it. In Sunday's Times Chass suggested that "If Bonds ever makes the real Hall of Fame, his plaque should portray a vial of the flaxseed oil that he said his trainer gave him to rub on his body. If Clemens makes it, he should be depicted with a syringe of lidocaine, which is what Clemens says his trainer injected into him."

Come on, Murray! Should we retroactively put a mug of beer on the plaques of Grover Cleveland Alexander, Babe Ruth, and Mike "King" Kelly? How about a tube of KY jelly on Gaylord Perry's, a hot dog on Reggie Jackson's, a pack of cigarettes on Earl Weaver's, or a pair of filed spikes (or KKK hood) on Ty Cobb's? You've covered baseball for enough years to know we don't look for our role models in baseball clubhouses.

Maureen Dowd

I just can't resist. It's often hard to figure out where Maureen Dowd's columns are really coming from, but her stunningly nasty column in today's New York Times combined her trademark "reporting" -- quoting fellow Times reporters -- with over-the-top hostility to Bill and (especially) Hillary Clinton. "She became emotional," Dowd sneered, likening Hillary to Cinderella, "because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite." Nice, Maureen, really nice. Whose fear might really be speaking here? That terrific headshot on the Times website can only be accurate for so many years, right?

Hillary can do nothing right in Dowd's view, and in that sense Dowd resembles far too many Americans who can't figure out what they think about a female presidential candidate. When she's tough, she's too tough, proving her "masculinity." And when she's soft, she's too soft, "spreading gauzy emotion." Dowd cannot stand the fact that "At her victory party, Hillary was like the heroine of a Lifetime movie, a woman in peril who manages to triumph." But that's exactly who Hilary was, yesterday, and she gets to enjoy that. Shame on you, Maureen Dowd.

Comments

[xrayman]

Dowd is a journalistic and political hack who helped to deep six Gore in 2000. The best thing to do with her is ignore her childish rantings.

[Tellmethetruth]

Poor women who earn less than $50,000 a year voted for Hillary Clinton almost 2 to 1 over all her male rivals. Poor women decided to be heard in New Hampshire, and they didn't identify with Edwards or Obama, but with Clinton.

I am sure Maureen Dowd is far too "good" and "superior" with too much "class" to associate with the poor women who voted for Hillary Clinton.

"Be kind to women with no husbands and their children, for their angels always see the face of God."

[MoMoDo]

This is one of the least nasty columns Dowd has written about Hillary. Dowd noted and commented on what everyone else agrees was the turning point in the NH primary, her brief show of emotion. I think Hillary genuinely was afraid of losing this election. It would have sunk her campaign. She should have been concerned.

And it's so classy to make fun of Dowd's age and looks as a comeback.

[davsing]

Setting aside issues you may have with Dowd's craft, the underlying points were brilliantly laid out by Dowd. There is a bit of Nixon in Hillary; in part because she has been so vilified by many quarters for so many years -- and because she had to endure the humiliation of the Lewinsky saga -- she's developed an "us vs. them" political personna -- and has been wrapped in a tight cocoon of her advisors and FOBs -- that insulate her from the world-at-large. Regarding her emotional moment -- while her words were about her feelings about the country -- her emotinal shell cracked slightly because she truly believed her moment of redemption (Nixon 1968) was evaporating.

[gingermc]

I believe that many people are giving Senator Clinton too much credit for showing her emotions in NH and are discounting Maureen Dowd's arguments re. how the Clintons sabotage their talents & good points due to their tactics b/c M. Dowd can be so shrill and out there at times. I'm an African-American woman who has contributed to both the Clinton & Obama campaigns, but as the race in NH evolved & the Clintons licked their wounds, that old Sister Soulja-bashing, Lani Guinier-ditching (while supporting trouser snake Dick Morris) side of the Clintons started to peek through again, and it's all that many of us (Black folks) have been talking about. Bill calling Barack a "kid" instead of going after him on substance, Hilary suggesting that MLK's talk meant nothing until LBJ saved the day, and Gloria Steinem's "black men have it better than white women" piece in the Times yesterday, just in time for the polls to open in NH, didn't help matters one bit b/c it was historically inaccurate, misleading and went unnecessarily overboard in pitting the plight of white women vs. the plight of black men to get middled-aged white women in NH out to the polls. The Clinton MO has been one of slash and burn if it gets me an office or keeps me there, and I'm sick of it being at the expense of African Americans.

[WASanford]

Wow, you really get it on when you get the chance, but I"d like to stick to the steroid scandal. Bear in mind that my sports of choice are F1, Rolex, American Le Mans and motorcycle racing.

I can"t remember seeing ANY definitive study that proves steroids, or any other drug, confers any true competitive advantage in any sport. Not even one! Steroids build muscle mass and may increase strength but even that hypothesis does not seem false able and remains to be proven. Given the lack of any proof, all we have left is innuendo and slander, which is something which we should be very careful about.

Americans are constantly being sold the notion that performance and good health comes from a pill bottle. When I went to see my doctor with constipation and heartburn, I was told to buy myself a bottle of pepsid. No mention was made of FIBER which was the self tried idea, from the internet, that seemingly cured both conditions. The lesson from that episode was to be very careful before taking a prescribed medicine. View medicines with a suspicious attitude and FULLY discuss taking them with your doctor before going to the pharmacy. I always ask my doctor "What else can I do?" when my doctor prescribes a drug. My second question becomes "Is there a generic that will serve the same function?"

Americans are constantly being sold the notion that good health and happiness comes from a pill bottle. The steroid scandal only supports that notion. Join me in resisting this self-serving and WRONG message from the drug companies!

[westwind]

Maureen Dowd's writing exists to benefit only one person: Maureen Dowd. She is a person with a talent for writing, but who has no discernable principles. She writes almost entirely from a "look how witty and smart I am" perspective, and doesn't care about who or what her words destroy. I don't particularly like Hillary Clinton, but when Dowd character-assassinates her or anyone else, I immediately have to reevaluate the object of her hate, because anyone that irks Dowd probably has something going for them.