So many issues, so little space. Well, I really have as much space as I want but the more I write, the more people expect me to write and I’m never one for raising expectations.

There was that Super Bowl and a great Australian Open final between two all-time greats. But, I really don’t have much to say.

Congratulations to Pittsburgh-their fans deserve it for putting up with everything else involved with living in northern West Virginia. Including the World Series, we have two straight championships going to horrible places to live. I like this trend. Anything to distract them from the fact that in the game of life, they finished last in the division.

I won’t even poke fun at Roger Federer for his waterworks after Nadal beat him at the Australian open. I cried at my college graduation when I, like Federer, saw that the good times were over and it was time to get a real job.

Does DeVry have a tennis team?

I was all set to write about Kobe vs. Lebron on Sunday, which was promptly downgraded to Odom vs. Szczerbiak, then the A-rod news hit. It was a “Where were you…” moment this A-Rod hater and the entire Crown Heights chapter of A-Rod Haters. Really, what’s not to hate? I’m a broke Red Sox fan who struggles with the ladies, so I hate on many levels. I’m not afraid to say that by the way, and if you’ve read this column before you’ve already surmised my feminine deficiencies.

That being said, my initial reaction wasn’t elation or satisfaction, but sadness. I no longer saw the guy whose superhuman feats made me feel small but another human being, a much larger, more accomplished one, but a human being nevertheless. One who’s routinely booed by his own fans and whose marriage was dissolved on the back pages of the NY tabloids. The only thing Alex Rodriguez has is his accomplishments in baseball, and in a matter of a few hours that was taken from him.

We want to know why. Why would Alex Rodriquez take steroids? That’s easy. A-Rod took steroids because he was playing professional baseball during a time when professional baseball players took steroids.

No, it’s not right and never will be. But, imagine a world where owners, baseball officials and the players union all turn a blind eye to a growing steroid problem. Imagine taking the field knowing players on your own team are cheating and you have every reason to suspect the pitcher you’re facing is as well. Imagine devoting your entire life to the game with that as your primary means of supporting yourself and your family. It’s still not right, but it sure is complicated. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing. In fact, I thought I’d found my own comedy performance enhancing drug called “Steel Reserve” but I found out it caused diarrhea of every orifice. Especially the mouth.

I think Alex Rodriguez deserves to have his achievements scrutinized but he doesn’t deserve the vilification that is sure to follow.

Keeping it Classy

If anyone should be vilified, it’s the owners, who benefited the most from the steroid era, with increased ticket sales, ratings and overall interest in what was an aging pastime, yet escape now without any culpability. It’s always the men on the front lines who take all the bullets.

Weekly Schadenfreude

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VUQxncPfrM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Y8m-60JHQ&NR=1

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A quote from the much-revered President Abraham Lincoln from a speech he delivered in 1858, three years before he became President and just seven years before his assassination:

“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

One hundred and fifty years later America’s first black president, Barack Obama, was sworn into office with his hand on Lincoln’s Bible.

Read Henry Louis Gates’ whole article, “Was Lincoln A Racist?” here. Interesting stuff.

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In an interview running on Inside Edition Wednesday night, George W. Bush’s former chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. huffs that “there should be a dress code of respect” in the White House. President Obama, he says, should “wear a suit coat and tie.”

And if that wasn’t enough to gast a few flabbers, Card went on: “The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.”

Wow.

You can read more about President Obama’s less formal White House style here.

Source: NYT

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• Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination yesterday as a firestorm erupted over his “inadvertent” failure to pay $128,000 in taxes.

• Two hours before Daschle’s withdrawal, Nancy Killefer, Obama’s nominee for chief White House performance officer, withdrew from consideration because of her own unpaid payroll taxes.

• Today Obama announced a $500,000 cap on compensation for executives who receive federal bailout funds. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon: “It’s unfair.”

• House Republican Mike Pence urged Republican colleagues in the Senate to oppose President Obama’s stimulus bill, helpfully explaining that there aren’t just specific provisions they disagree with – they are opposed to the entire thing. “There’s nothing modest about the differences House Republicans have with House Democrats over this bill,” he said. “House Republicans don’t believe you can borrow and spend your way out.”

• New Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, the party’s first black chairman ever, actually had these words for Obama: “How ya like me now?” Of the failure of Obama’s stimulus bill to garner a single Republican vote in the House, Steele congratulated his party with, “The goose egg you laid on the president’s desk was just beautiful.”

• European Union has warned the US that if they adopt President Obama’s “Buy American” policy, they will retaliate. A trade war could sink the world into a global depression.

At a press conference today the president is expected to recommend that everyone “simmer the f-ck down, you f-cking ingrates. Do you want Bush back? DO YOU???”

Source: NYT, Times Online, NYT, Bloomberg

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