Tidying Up and Moving On

Wait a second. Do you mean to tell me that you've never seen "The Lion King"? It's like I don't even know you anymore.

As to responding to your Bonds post. Let me start with the bottom line: I'm not convinced. I sort of buy your argument about passing the "smell test", but let me counter that with the facts. At the time Bonds was taking steroids, a huge portion of his teammates and, more importantly, his opponents were taking them -- at least according to some reports. Even if by normal human standards, steroids seems unethical, the frequency of their use certainly took away some of the stench. Building on that point, let me pose a question straight out of the bar course sponsored by the Devil's law school: what kind of competitor would Bonds have been if he refused to take steroids? I mean, if you were a director sitting on a board of a technology company that refused to use some software pirated from a Chinese company just because it didn't seem ethical, but all your competitors were using it, wouldn't you have an obligation to push them to use the software. I mean, how responsible would it be to shareholders if you knew that not using the pirated softward meant that your company would suffer, in a relative sense?

Believe me, it brings me no pleasure to defend Bonds, but I still think that his actions are not absolutely wrong and there is way too much gray in his case -- and in the case of so many other athletes -- that it is difficult to take an absolute stand against his actions. It is a knee-jerk reaction, it seems to me, to take a stand against steroid use. I am merely trying to resist that reaction.

By the way, as to your point about holding athletes to a higher standard, do you think we should send your thoughts to Michael Vick? Now, there is an absolute wrong that I can get behind.

On to a topic that has been bothering me. What the hell happened to John McCain? Here is a guy who is as principled as they come and he totally took the fall for being principled. As Gail Collins noted in her OpEd yesterday, it is a myth that Americans appreciate principled politicians. They only like principled politicians who agree with them. Still, I feel like this guy has suffered more than he should have and that perhaps of all the political victims George Bush has left in his wake, McCain is worst off. Don't get me wrong, I could never support a McCain presidency, but at least he has the gumption (most of the time) to live true to his political stands. His fall, IMO, speaks volumes about how broken our system is.