The sordid tale of Barry Bonds.

The BBQ Pit
1

So Barry Bonds was indicted for perjury. So what? All this money spent to try to nail him, and all they could get him on was lying under oath? Pshaw, I say.

They’ve been trying to get Barry from the moment he came into the league. He had the type of personality that some people loved, but a good number of people hated. As time went on and his triumphs continued, they began to resort to petty things to try to bring him down. They found their opportunity when the BALCO scandal blew up. A whole bunch of people got caught up in it and several were suspended for lengthy periods of time, but Barry always managed to stay above the fray, even though lots of people suspected him.

Then someone betrayed private conversations to others, who dropped the dime on him. Suddenly it was Barry front and center, and he couldn’t get away this time. Oh, no, it was his butt on the line. After many long years of investigation and countless millions burned to get him, they got him for perjury.

You see, Barry got up in front of the cameras, pointed right at them, and told the American people “I did not use anabolic steroids from that man, Victor Conte”. So many people were taken in by that that it went onto the back burner for a while and many people were satisfied with that declaration of innocence.

Then it came out that Barry lied to the grand jury. It is said that he answered because it depended upon what the definition of “no” is. He thought “No” meant “No maybe no yes no”, and not “no no”. It is on these things that such matters hinge.

In the meantime, Barry’s supporters asserted that the matter was a private one between Barry, his body, and his family, and if Barry’s body forgave him, who were we to condemn him for his little white lie? Others, sensibly, declared that perjury was perjury and that the crime wasn’t the steroid use, it was lying under oath. As you might imagine, these people got shouted down and denounced as witch-hunters, and that they were going after Barry for political reasons.

In the meantime, it is suspected that a rather large steroid ring is operating out of Croatia, and Barry will muster his considerable clout and expose them. Some people will see this as a good thing; others will denounce it as an attempt by Barry to deflect blame from himself.

Nevertheless, the proceedings will continue, and I will continue to keep you posted on this long-running, sordid, dramatic tale of deceit. Stay tuned.

2

The man is an asshole and a cheater.

3

This is like reading Jonathan Swift!

4

Has amyone gotten around to naming the ‘Clinton got a blow job’ meme?

Couldn’t you like send him some flowers or something and leave us out?

5

Oh, I get it, it’s a parody. Brilliant stuff, thanks for sharing.

6

Well, hell, it’s actually somewhat apropos here, because in both Clinton’s and Bonds’s cases the alleged perjuries, not the primary offenses (which in both cases involve the terms cream and injection), is what’s at issue, legally.

7

Screw the OP, this is brilliant stuff

8

Breaking News: Clinton claims incriminating stains on Lewinsky’s dress were “flax seed oil.”

9

Bonds blew Clinton?

10

While I recognize the tongue-in-cheek nature of the OP, I’m going to make a serious point about this thing.

For one, each count of perjury could land Barry in prison for 5 years, the single count of obstruction of justice could land him in prison for 10 years. If all of these charges are served consecutively he could be in prison for 30 years. Now, obviously that isn’t going to happen–I imagine worst case scenario for Barry is he gets the same amount of time Scooter Libby got (and I don’t expect Bush to grant Barry clemency.)

Was it important to prosecute Scooter Libby? If the answer to that is yes, then the answer has to be yes for Barry as well. We all know that one lied about his involvement in a matter of (arguable) national security, the other lied before a grand jury investigating a steroid trafficking ring.

While the subject matter is certainly going to have some importance to the public, I think that any form of perjury needs to be vigorously investigated and prosecuted. A large part of the validity of our entire legal system is based on fact finding and such, which often relies on sworn testimony. We entrust groups of men and women to sort out such testimony to get at what they feel is the truth. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But what undermines the system is deliberately speaking untruthfully when you’re under oath, perjury is a legitimate crime and should be prosecuted and carry with it significant sanctions. Even if the case in which the perjurer committed the crime is not of any great importance, the disregard which perjury shows to our entire society and its legal system is huge, and deserving of serious punishment.

11

I’m terribly disappointed. I write a modest yet compelling satire and nobody rises up with outrage to tell me what the difference is. People left and right are calling for Barry’s inflated head on a pike over what is, to be blunt, an irrelevant sideshow in something as equally irrelevant as sports, yet when it involves someone that matters it’s handwaved away as if it makes no difference.

I’m rather reluctant to say it because puns are not really my milieu, but I will anyway: way to keep your eye on the ball, people. I can’t say that I am surprised though. Hypocrisy is not exactly unknown in these parts, especially when it’s your favorite son on the spot.

12

I have a few responses to that:
(1) It is hard to get outraged about perjury in a void. The seriousness of perjury feels like it’s related to the seriousness of the original crime. (Granted, as Martin Hyde persuasively argues, this is probably a bad thing). Thus, people’s outrage at Barry Bonds is for using steroids. Their outrage at Clinton is for getting a blow job. And their outrage at Scooter Libby is for, well, who knows. Minor perjury in a case of mass murder is going to get people’s dander up more than massive perjury in a child custody hearing.
(2) Furthermore, people’s outrage at a particular action depends on its context, and its importance in that context. Use of steroids by a professional baseball player is HUGELY important in the context of professional baseball. It at least potentially alters basically everything that player does. On the other hand, getting a blow job, in the context of being the president of the US, is of a lot less clear import. I’m not going to claim that I can objectively prove how important or unimportant that is to someone’s fitness for office, but it’s certainly arguable that it’s fairly unimportant.
(3) Putting (1) and (2) together, it is thus not at all surprising to me that people are more outraged by BB’s perjury than BC’s.
(4) The other important issue is the politicization of the prosecution of Clinton, and the atmosphere surrounding it. A lot of people believe that Clinton was not convicted of perjury because a blind process of justice, fairly applied, decided that that avenue of investigation should be investigated, and it was, and justice was served. Rather (and again, this is not necessarily something I can prove, but I certainly don’t think it’s prima facie ridiculous) that his political enemies wasted incredible quantities of taxpayer money and time, not to mention doing immeasurable damage to the tone of our national discourse, basically digging and digging and harassing and harassing until they got something to stick. By that argument, your analogy might be better if the american league was doing the investigating of Barry, largely motivated by jealously of his baseball feats, and they finally nailed him for, say, tax evasion… something that is definitely bad, but which doesn’t really affect his day to day baseball playing… and the whole investigation soured large portions of the public on baseball altogether, and polarized the rest, to the extent that NL and AL now spent all their time slinging insults at each other.

13

To me, it either makes a difference or it doesn’t.

I don’t care about Barry Bonds any more than I care about Bill Clinton’s sex life. Frankly, I don’t understand all the hubbub about steroids. I disagree with the “integrity of the game” arguments, they are meaningless to me.

No, what bothers me is the perjury thing. When someone asks you a question under oath that is relevant, you answer it truthfully, whether you’re ashamed of yourself or not. Of course the person asking the question knows the answer, why would you ever think otherwise?

But baseball is frivolous nonsense compared to the lawbreaking of the very person who is the single most prominent person in our country. But hey, we like him, so it’s OK. Barry Bonds, not so much, let’s get 'em.

THAT is what bothers me. It is blatant hypocrisy at its worst. If we’re willing to give ol’ Slick a pass, how about we give Barry a pass? I mean, let’s totally demean our laws instead of stopping halfway.

14

I dunno what to say that I didn’t already say… I thought I expressed myself pretty clearly. But I will expand a bit.
(1) Why is saying we should give Slick Willie “a pass”? Who is saying “he should face no consequences”? I strongly believe that his actions did not merit impeachment. Nor, however, should he have gotten off scott-free. And in fact, he didn’t.

(2) “But baseball is frivolous nonsense compared to the lawbreaking of the very person who is the single most prominent person in our country.” So if you had two crimes to compare:
(a) The president of the US had an unpaid parking ticket
vs
(b) A clever baseball team manager had somehow used magnets to make all balls hit by his team go 10% further, greatly increasing their hitting ability

The first one would be more alarming and worthy of public discussion to you?

15

Now you’re mixing hand grenades and apples. Both crimes are equivalent. They are exactly the same. However, one of the people has more prominence and more authority. Why are we talking about 30 years (which is pretty much ridiculous anyway), or for that matter any jail time whatsoever, for Barry, when Bill got what, a big whopping suspension of a law degree that he had no intention of using again anyway? It’s a joke with a particularly stupid punchline.

16

I guess we disagree.

17

I just want him out of my attention span entirely. No more mention. Just go away and stay there.

18

I’m just blown away (no pun intended) that anyone would hear the Bonds thing and be not only reminded of the Clinton matter, but so invested in it that he would take the time to come here and compose an OP like this one.

I’m almost hesistant to bring it up because of my fear that it will set off another hand-wringing “You don’t really like me even though I try so very hard” response from the OP, but goddamn, think of all the numbskull posters here who didn’t try to link Bonds and Clinton.

Finally, Bonds lied about committing an illegal act. Clinton did not. There’s only one person who I’ll ever be remotely concerned about, should she ever lie about receiving oral sex, and that person is not Bill Clinton.

19

The connection was easy to make. They’ve been making the connection all over sports talk radio.

To the best of my knowledge this is the only thread involving Barry Bonds at the moment, and this wouldn’t even exist were I not annoyed by the handwringing hypocrisy of people who have called for his head in the past.

Clinton lied to the grand jury while being questioned in relation to an illegal act (sexual harassment), and thus committed an illegal act. Your rationalization is weak at best.

20

Clinton lied about having recieved oral sex from Monica Lewinsky. He received punishment as a result of that.

Unless you have new evidence nobody’s heard of, Clinton never lied about committing sexual harrassment. I’m not arguing that Clinton didn’t commit perjury. I’m illustrating why the subjective level of outrage may (and in my opinion should) be different for the two instances - one was a lie about a criminal act, the other was not.

You’re trying to suggest that these two instances of perjury are the same. You’ve already had to add “in relation to” to in order to continue to support that position, which to me says that you acknowledge that they are not the same.

Finally, anyone who can, apparently with a straight face, pull out the old “Slick” Willy, and not see how anachronistic that one is, has their head firmly implanted in the ass of the 90’s. If only we still had a president whose biggest fault was that he lied about a blowjob, how fantastic would the world be today?