rockets redglare

I'm watching the Congressional hearings on whether Roger Clemens used HGH. My unscientific observation is that the Republicans are critical of Clemens's accuser (McNamee), and the Democrats are critical of Clemens. Perhaps Clemens is a Republican. If not, I can't explain the self-righteous tone of some of the Democratic questioners, or the Republicans' impunging of McNamee's integrity. 

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On the larger issue of performance enhancing drugs: if there were a drug that would enhance intellectual ability, I would surely use it. Actually, there is one [login required], but I am not using it. Yet. And I doubt whether anyone would find it problematic if I did, as long as it was legal. We hold the athletic world as a world apart, a world in which purity must be upheld, in which only hard work and talent counts. In other words, the world of sports is the perfect meritocracy. Or is it? Athletes are not all equal physically. Hence, those who are lacking something seek to make up for it with guile or by enhancing their physical skills. Most do it within the limits of legality and/or fairness prescribed by the various athletic federations and leagues. But is this idea of sports as a world apart worth defending as such. Who really cares if any athlete is a 'juicer' or blood doper? Why not open up these means of enhancing performance (as long as they meet legal standards) to all athletes. What explains the fact that athletes are forbidden by law and legal rules to use steroids, yet they are free to smoke cigarettes? Or drink coffee? Both nicotine and caffeine are known stimulants. Athletes in poorer nations do not have access to the same quality training as do athletes from wealthy nations. Yet there is no effort to level the economic playing field.

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Projection is a fact of psychical life; hypocrisy is a fact of ethical life; and athletics is a place where both these facts meet. American college athletes are amateurs. Nonetheless the universities for whom they perform reap financial rewards far beyond the cost of athletic scholarships. The Congress and health officials warn of the dangers of steroids and HGH. Nonetheless, baseball fans flock to stadiums in record numbers to watch suspected "juicers" perform. Sportswriters engage in self-righteous denunciations of athletes suspected of using performance enhancing drugs on the back pages of American newspapers, while eschewing the professional journalistic ethics of their erstwhile colleagues, whose hard news reportage appears on the front pages of newspapers. Is there a solution to this? Of course: less purity and more reality; less moralizing and more analyzing.