Mikey D

Yesterday I had an ice day, which meant I got to stay home from school and watch the Clemens/McNamee congressional hearing. And watch I did- all 5 hours of it without missing a beat. While as pathetic as that sounds and probably is, I rathered enjoyed watching questions being shot at both men and watching them answer without having their lawyer speak for them. I mean, it kept my attention for five hours straight, so it wasn't boring.

Now I could talk about my thoughts about what Clemens/McNamee said, but I'm going to stay away from that for the most part. What I want to talk about is our government.

You hear it all the time: The government wastes tax dollars. Party lines get in the way of solving problems and getting to the bottom of important issues. Our government officials are idiots. For the most part I stay away from talk like that because I don't really know what they do on a daily basis. Could I be better informed? Sure, information is readily available for me. But to be completely honest, and I do admit this is a problem with the American public- myself included- I'm just not that interested. Because of that, I'm not going to say the government is wasting our tax dollars, party lines are getting in the way, and our elected officials are idiots.

Until now. A little bit, at least. Yesterday offered me a great insight into what a congressional hearing looks like. I listened to dozens of our congressmen speak and ask questions to Clemens and McNamee. My conclusion? I'm kind of embarrassed.

People say the government is wasting our tax dollars. Well, it's hard to argue that after they held the congressional hearing yesterday. First and foremost, they solved absolutely nothing. Did I enjoy watching it? Yeah, but in the end I didn't really come away with much. Nothing was resolved. The point of the hearing, which was to educate the youth on steroids, was completely missed despite random mentions of it by congressmen. A waste? When you hear that 2-3 million dollars was spent on this hearing, it's hard to argue that it wasn't a waste of a day, and as a tax payer, I think you have a right to be upset.

The thing I kept seeing over and over during the hearing was that Republicans seem to like Clemens, and Democrats seem to like McNamee. The rich man's party versus the common man's. It was very weird. When I sat down to watch yesterday, I cleared my mind of any feelings I had towards either McNamee or Clemens. I wanted to hear both sides speak and answer questions, then I wanted to make my judgement on their guilt. I kind of expected the congressmen to ask questions- tough questions- but leave their own feelings of guilt or innocence out of the proceedings. I wanted objectiveness. Instead I saw congressmen focus on either Clemens or McNamee, and hammer them as if they were either guilty or a slime bucket, without asking decent or fair questions. The worst was probably the congressman from Indiana, who jumped all over McNamee saying, "This is really disgusting. You sit here and tell lie after lie, and I know what I don't believe, and that's you." How do you know he's lying, sir??? In his mind, Clemens was innocent of all accusations, and without asking questions to probe and find the truth he wasted everyones time by making a fool of himself and embarrassing me and the American public.

You know, some congressmen are just out there. I won't call them idiots, because they probably have more academic accolades than I care to count. But when you are in a congressional hearing, and you tell one of the witnesses that he "is going to heaven", I have a real problem with it. When you have another congressmen using his time to talk to ask Clemens what jersey he is going in to the Hall with, I have a problem with it. When you can't even pronounce Brian McNamee or Jose Canseco's name, I have a problem with it. When you come to a congressional hearing without being prepared, I have a MAJOR problem with it. Unfortunately, that is what happened. There were more than several congressmen that showed up at this hearing without a clue. It was painful to listen to them try and ask questions about a situation and a topic they weren't prepared to speak on. And to hear things like, "Mr. Clemens, you are going to heaven," is disturbing. Was this not supposed to be a hearing on steriods? It was unfortunate to have people like that speak yesterday.

Like I said, I'm not the most educated on our U.S. government. I'm far from it. But yesterday did offer a small glimpse into the world of politics, our politicians, and our tax dollars at work, and to be quite frank, I didn't like what I saw. I'm not going to bash our government because it's not my place, but I will say that I'm extremely disappointed, and I hope to god that yesterday was an anomaly rather than a regularity.