Idle Politicians and Super Bowls
In a bout of inexplicable frivolity and silliness, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has demanded answers from the National Football League on the "Spygate" scandal, with threats of a Congressional inquiry. Next on the agenda: Senator Specter monitors a game of playground tag for irregularities in who is labeled "it."
There are a lot of serious issues facing the country as we move into this next Presidential election: the continued war in Iraq, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and resulting economic turmoil, the skyrocketing cost of health care, and the little issue of a certain agency having destroyed videos possibly showing unsavory actions by some of its members.
It's that last scandal, too long ignored, that one brave Senator has finally decided to tackle head-on. That's right, Republican Senator Arlen Specter has finally stepped up and demanded a Congressional inquiry into the NFL's destruction of the videotapes in the "Spygate" scandal.
No, seriously. I'm not kidding. But don't worry, Specter hasn't lost his sense of perspective: "I do believe that it is a matter of importance. It's not going to displace the stimulus package or the Iraq war, but I think the integrity of football is very important, and I think the National Football League has a special duty to the American people -- and further the Congress -- because they have an antitrust exemption," he said on Friday.
Sarcasm aside, his final point - the NFL's antitrust exemption - is relevant, though it has little to do with the issue upon which Specter has built his soapbox. The antitrust exemption gives the NFL a special status to do things - pool broadcast rights, hold a draft forcing college players onto certain teams, and so forth - that no other business can. Congress does have some responsibility toward the NFL in this regard. The NFL's anti-trust exemption has been a pet project of Specter's for the last couple of years, and most of his criticism has not been off-base: the NFL's attempt to strong-arm cable companies into accepting the NFL Network, and its exclusive contract with DirecTV for its Sunday Ticket package are highly questionable, and deserve to be examined in the context of the league's exemption. Perhaps Specter's sudden interest in Spygate is merely a ploy to put more pressure on the NFL on those two issues. In fact, it seems quite likely that that is the case. I sure hope it I, anyway, because that at least makes a tiny bit of sense.
Unfortunately, it doesn't make Specter look any less ridiculous. At least in the case of the Major League Baseball steroid hearings, Congress could argue that laws were being broken: steroids are illegal, and if the league was aware of that illegal activity and did nothing, they could be culpable. Videotaping defensive signals in a public arena, however, isn't illegal. The Patriots broke an internal rule of the sport, not a law, and were punished for it by the sport. Whether one agrees or disagrees with that punishment, the idea that we should be wasting taxpayer time and money to investigate an instance of someone cheating at a game - something that happens anytime a football player is called for pass interference or holding, or a baseball player is caught with a corked bat - is, to be blunt, beyond stupid. What's next: a Senate panel on rampant cheating in backyard horsehoes?
When asked about this, Specter responded in a way that can only be labeled as perplexing, telling the New York Times, "I don't think you have to have a law broken to have a legitimate interest by the Congress on the integrity of the game ... What if there was something on the tapes we might want to be subpoenaed, for example? You can't destroy it. That would be obstruction of justice."
This should be alarming to anyone with a library of home videos or photo albums: throw them out, and you won't just incur the wrath of your significant other, you could be obstructing justice... in the off-chance that Congress attempts to subpoena them as part of an investigation into the time you gave yourself an extra ten points during family Scrabble night.
I'm not arguing here about whether the Patriots videotaping constitutes cheating, or whether the NFL's response was appropriate. Those are perfectly valid debates among sports fans. If I met Arlen Specter in a bar, if he goes to such places, I'd be happy to chat about it with him over a beer or four. What disturbs me, however, is that an elected official actually believes - or claims to believe, anyway - that this is a matter of such a high priority that the United States Congress needs to investigate.
In trying to make sense of this, I have come up with only one possibility: being in Congress has become so dull that our representatives have taken to playing games of Truth or Dare in the Capitol. And, having been duly double-dog-dared by Representative Henry Waxman to come up with the most asinine idea for a Congressional inquiry possible, Senator Arlen Specter was forced into making this demand, lest he be labeled a scaredy-scaredy-scaredy cat by Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.
That's the story I'm going with anyway. If anyone has anything better, I'm all ears.
It's that last scandal, too long ignored, that one brave Senator has finally decided to tackle head-on. That's right, Republican Senator Arlen Specter has finally stepped up and demanded a Congressional inquiry into the NFL's destruction of the videotapes in the "Spygate" scandal.
No, seriously. I'm not kidding. But don't worry, Specter hasn't lost his sense of perspective: "I do believe that it is a matter of importance. It's not going to displace the stimulus package or the Iraq war, but I think the integrity of football is very important, and I think the National Football League has a special duty to the American people -- and further the Congress -- because they have an antitrust exemption," he said on Friday.
Sarcasm aside, his final point - the NFL's antitrust exemption - is relevant, though it has little to do with the issue upon which Specter has built his soapbox. The antitrust exemption gives the NFL a special status to do things - pool broadcast rights, hold a draft forcing college players onto certain teams, and so forth - that no other business can. Congress does have some responsibility toward the NFL in this regard. The NFL's anti-trust exemption has been a pet project of Specter's for the last couple of years, and most of his criticism has not been off-base: the NFL's attempt to strong-arm cable companies into accepting the NFL Network, and its exclusive contract with DirecTV for its Sunday Ticket package are highly questionable, and deserve to be examined in the context of the league's exemption. Perhaps Specter's sudden interest in Spygate is merely a ploy to put more pressure on the NFL on those two issues. In fact, it seems quite likely that that is the case. I sure hope it I, anyway, because that at least makes a tiny bit of sense.
Unfortunately, it doesn't make Specter look any less ridiculous. At least in the case of the Major League Baseball steroid hearings, Congress could argue that laws were being broken: steroids are illegal, and if the league was aware of that illegal activity and did nothing, they could be culpable. Videotaping defensive signals in a public arena, however, isn't illegal. The Patriots broke an internal rule of the sport, not a law, and were punished for it by the sport. Whether one agrees or disagrees with that punishment, the idea that we should be wasting taxpayer time and money to investigate an instance of someone cheating at a game - something that happens anytime a football player is called for pass interference or holding, or a baseball player is caught with a corked bat - is, to be blunt, beyond stupid. What's next: a Senate panel on rampant cheating in backyard horsehoes?
When asked about this, Specter responded in a way that can only be labeled as perplexing, telling the New York Times, "I don't think you have to have a law broken to have a legitimate interest by the Congress on the integrity of the game ... What if there was something on the tapes we might want to be subpoenaed, for example? You can't destroy it. That would be obstruction of justice."
This should be alarming to anyone with a library of home videos or photo albums: throw them out, and you won't just incur the wrath of your significant other, you could be obstructing justice... in the off-chance that Congress attempts to subpoena them as part of an investigation into the time you gave yourself an extra ten points during family Scrabble night.
I'm not arguing here about whether the Patriots videotaping constitutes cheating, or whether the NFL's response was appropriate. Those are perfectly valid debates among sports fans. If I met Arlen Specter in a bar, if he goes to such places, I'd be happy to chat about it with him over a beer or four. What disturbs me, however, is that an elected official actually believes - or claims to believe, anyway - that this is a matter of such a high priority that the United States Congress needs to investigate.
In trying to make sense of this, I have come up with only one possibility: being in Congress has become so dull that our representatives have taken to playing games of Truth or Dare in the Capitol. And, having been duly double-dog-dared by Representative Henry Waxman to come up with the most asinine idea for a Congressional inquiry possible, Senator Arlen Specter was forced into making this demand, lest he be labeled a scaredy-scaredy-scaredy cat by Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.
That's the story I'm going with anyway. If anyone has anything better, I'm all ears.
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