We've commented on steroids and PEDs in sports before. In the wake of the latest "scandal," this time on my Red Sox, a Globe column got it exactly right:
Roger Clemens has never failed a drug test. But fans hate the guy. So he’s a cheater. Barry Bonds is a pariah. So we don’t buy his story about flaxseed oil.
Just about everybody loves David Ortiz. So Red Sox fans are going to believe him. He has been a terrific performer who is also great with the community and the media. He has earned the reservoir of goodwill that now washes over him. And sitting before the mass media at Yankee Stadium yesterday, he was spectacular. If he told us he was only 5 feet tall, Sox fans would have been inclined to believe him.
Here's the human nature aspect of that: it's not limited to sports. It doesn't matter if Boston fans believe that David Ortiz juiced up and wouldn't have hit 50 home runs otherwise. It doesn't matter if Roger Clemens never makes the hall of fame. But it does matter that conservatives blindly side with their Republican leaders (Woo! John McCain picked this woman from Alaska to run as his VP candidate! Palin rocks! Obamafascist health care = bureaucratic Death Panels!). It matters that liberals (or at least Democrats) often, if perhaps less frequently, do the same thing (Hurray, Specter is a Democrat! Let's get more Dems in Congress so they too can fail to do all the stuff we want them to do! Obama has not been awful on gay rights, he's all about equality! Don't tell me that the Obama DOJ has been lousy on more things than I can count, I'm covering my ears, I can't hear you!).
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