imo, a great read from the wash. post. i agree that enough is enough with these athletes acting like prima dona's.
National mood shifted against pushing envelope
COMMENTARY
By Thomas Boswell
Columnist
Updated: 11:51 p.m. ET Feb. 26, 2004
Perhaps Jamal Lewis, Kobe Bryant, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and the Colorado football program should form a support group along with Howard Stern, Bubba the Love Sponge, Janet Jackson, Martha Stewart and every Enron or WorldCom executive who's going to stand before a judge in the next year. Call them Celebrities in the Crosshairs.
The dragnet is out for the rich and famous in sports, entertainment and business. Some are accused of breaking laws, some of breaking rules, some of violating good taste, but all are under intense scrutiny from a public that has shifted to the sharply punitive.
The national mood has shifted. The promiscuous, permissive '90s are gone. The culture seems to have decided that it's time to get tough -- perhaps, in some cases, too tough. With so many prominent athletes facing so many different charges, or potential charges, we'll need to resist to impulse to say, "Guilty, guilty, guilty."
In one sense, the crackdowns that we read about -- in every section of the paper -- may be overdue. Plenty who get a deserved comeuppance, whether it's a lost job, a damaged reputation or jail time. But justice never bats 1.000 -- especially when "reform" enthusiasm runs high. A dragnet, by its nature, is imprecise.
Our latest symbolic figure is the Ravens' Lewis. He wasn't in handcuffs yesterday. His hearing in federal magistrate court took only 15 minutes. The running back had no trouble posting $500,000 bond. When you can rush for 2,066 yards in a season, the cash is the easy part.
Still, Lewis's life has changed, whether in the end it deserves to or not. The charge against him -- "conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine of at least five kilograms" -- carries a sentence of 10 years to life. Even if Lewis is exonerated, these charges will surely shift the way he is perceived; he was already suspended from the NFL in 2001 for four games for substance abuse. Merited or not, he's now twice tainted.
Bryant has a similar nightmare hanging over him every day as he awaits his trial for rape. The cases against Bryant and Lewis, to the degree we know them, seem complex and ambiguous -- with no certain outcomes.
While Lewis and Bryant have been indicted, many of baseball's most famous sluggers are, at the moment, charged with guilt by association. Every day, all eyes are on Bonds and Giambi. Do they still have all their former muscles? In Bonds's case, the whole issue of cheating has erupted into the open this week because of Rockies reliever Turk Wendell.
"If my personal trainer . . . got indicted for that, there's no one in the world who wouldn't think that I was taking steroids," Wendell said. "What, because he's Barry Bonds, no ones going to say that? I mean, obviously he did it. [His trainer] admitted to giving steroids to baseball players. He just doesn't want to say his name. You don't have to. It's clear just seeing his body."
In any court, Bonds's lawyer would shout, "Objection, your honor," and the judge would say, "Sustained. Strike that from the record." But it's now part of the public record, which can be just as damning.
For Lewis, Bryant and Bonds -- three of the biggest stars in America's three major sports -- the problem is simple. After you have said unequivocally, "I'm completely innocent," what else is left to say? In some cases, even if the athlete is acquitted, he never loses the stigma of the original accusation.
What we are watching is a national change of mood -- certainly toward sports figures. Just as busts follow booms, wagging fingers and stern punishments follow the anything-goes eras that accompany flush times. The change is gradual. Eventually, a critical mass of the public gets sick of excessive greed, egotistic behavior and lawlessness. Instead of constantly wanting to push the envelope, many of us want to seal it up again, at least for a while.
We see one too many 500-foot home runs hit by a guy who barely used to be able to clear the fence. At some level, the word "hero" turns to "cheater." After one end zone celebration too many -- perhaps a cell phone in a goal post -- the word that springs to mind is no longer "star" but "idiot." The women who say they were raped by University of Colorado football players come forward after years of silence, sensing their charges are more likely to be taken seriously.
Sometimes, the worst of the exploitative trash that is merchandized under the protection of "art" hits us straight between the eyes -- even at halftime of the Super Bowl. Finally, one exposed breast is the last straw. "Okay, that's enough," we say. Or enough say it that, suddenly, Congressional leaders fall all over each other to grill media executives on what's indecent and what's not.
For at least the last 10 years, sports have simply "gone too far" in almost every way. Too many behaviors -- from ostentatious living to drug abuse to selfish play to disrespect for paying fans to widespread cheating with steroids -- have gone on for too long. Now we're seeing the backlash. Some who are innocent will be caught up in it. Dusty Baker, who's managed both Bonds and Sammy Sosa, says, "This is like the McCarthyism of sports." The Cubs manager has a valid point. These are days when we have to hold especially tight to the presumption of innocence.
But there's an opposite and equally valid side of the coin, too. Those in sports who want to run on the edge -- of cheating, of breaking the law or doing violence to others -- should consider themselves warned. There has been a sea change. Those who ignore it do so at their own risk.
National mood shifted against pushing envelope
COMMENTARY
By Thomas Boswell
Columnist
Updated: 11:51 p.m. ET Feb. 26, 2004
Perhaps Jamal Lewis, Kobe Bryant, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and the Colorado football program should form a support group along with Howard Stern, Bubba the Love Sponge, Janet Jackson, Martha Stewart and every Enron or WorldCom executive who's going to stand before a judge in the next year. Call them Celebrities in the Crosshairs.
The dragnet is out for the rich and famous in sports, entertainment and business. Some are accused of breaking laws, some of breaking rules, some of violating good taste, but all are under intense scrutiny from a public that has shifted to the sharply punitive.
The national mood has shifted. The promiscuous, permissive '90s are gone. The culture seems to have decided that it's time to get tough -- perhaps, in some cases, too tough. With so many prominent athletes facing so many different charges, or potential charges, we'll need to resist to impulse to say, "Guilty, guilty, guilty."
In one sense, the crackdowns that we read about -- in every section of the paper -- may be overdue. Plenty who get a deserved comeuppance, whether it's a lost job, a damaged reputation or jail time. But justice never bats 1.000 -- especially when "reform" enthusiasm runs high. A dragnet, by its nature, is imprecise.
Our latest symbolic figure is the Ravens' Lewis. He wasn't in handcuffs yesterday. His hearing in federal magistrate court took only 15 minutes. The running back had no trouble posting $500,000 bond. When you can rush for 2,066 yards in a season, the cash is the easy part.
Still, Lewis's life has changed, whether in the end it deserves to or not. The charge against him -- "conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine of at least five kilograms" -- carries a sentence of 10 years to life. Even if Lewis is exonerated, these charges will surely shift the way he is perceived; he was already suspended from the NFL in 2001 for four games for substance abuse. Merited or not, he's now twice tainted.
Bryant has a similar nightmare hanging over him every day as he awaits his trial for rape. The cases against Bryant and Lewis, to the degree we know them, seem complex and ambiguous -- with no certain outcomes.
While Lewis and Bryant have been indicted, many of baseball's most famous sluggers are, at the moment, charged with guilt by association. Every day, all eyes are on Bonds and Giambi. Do they still have all their former muscles? In Bonds's case, the whole issue of cheating has erupted into the open this week because of Rockies reliever Turk Wendell.
"If my personal trainer . . . got indicted for that, there's no one in the world who wouldn't think that I was taking steroids," Wendell said. "What, because he's Barry Bonds, no ones going to say that? I mean, obviously he did it. [His trainer] admitted to giving steroids to baseball players. He just doesn't want to say his name. You don't have to. It's clear just seeing his body."
In any court, Bonds's lawyer would shout, "Objection, your honor," and the judge would say, "Sustained. Strike that from the record." But it's now part of the public record, which can be just as damning.
For Lewis, Bryant and Bonds -- three of the biggest stars in America's three major sports -- the problem is simple. After you have said unequivocally, "I'm completely innocent," what else is left to say? In some cases, even if the athlete is acquitted, he never loses the stigma of the original accusation.
What we are watching is a national change of mood -- certainly toward sports figures. Just as busts follow booms, wagging fingers and stern punishments follow the anything-goes eras that accompany flush times. The change is gradual. Eventually, a critical mass of the public gets sick of excessive greed, egotistic behavior and lawlessness. Instead of constantly wanting to push the envelope, many of us want to seal it up again, at least for a while.
We see one too many 500-foot home runs hit by a guy who barely used to be able to clear the fence. At some level, the word "hero" turns to "cheater." After one end zone celebration too many -- perhaps a cell phone in a goal post -- the word that springs to mind is no longer "star" but "idiot." The women who say they were raped by University of Colorado football players come forward after years of silence, sensing their charges are more likely to be taken seriously.
Sometimes, the worst of the exploitative trash that is merchandized under the protection of "art" hits us straight between the eyes -- even at halftime of the Super Bowl. Finally, one exposed breast is the last straw. "Okay, that's enough," we say. Or enough say it that, suddenly, Congressional leaders fall all over each other to grill media executives on what's indecent and what's not.
For at least the last 10 years, sports have simply "gone too far" in almost every way. Too many behaviors -- from ostentatious living to drug abuse to selfish play to disrespect for paying fans to widespread cheating with steroids -- have gone on for too long. Now we're seeing the backlash. Some who are innocent will be caught up in it. Dusty Baker, who's managed both Bonds and Sammy Sosa, says, "This is like the McCarthyism of sports." The Cubs manager has a valid point. These are days when we have to hold especially tight to the presumption of innocence.
But there's an opposite and equally valid side of the coin, too. Those in sports who want to run on the edge -- of cheating, of breaking the law or doing violence to others -- should consider themselves warned. There has been a sea change. Those who ignore it do so at their own risk.
