Philadelphia Weekly

All it took was one ad in one airline magazine to expose the vulgar sham of last week's congressional inquiry into steroids and human growth hormones in Major League Baseball.

Union chief Donald Fehr, after enduring several hours of withering questions, held up one of those airline magazines usually positioned right behind the barf bag. He read out an ad: "Choose life. Grow young with HGH, the reverse-aging miracle!" His point was that better living through chemistry extends far beyond Major League Baseball.

But they didn't want to hear it. In a time of war, recession and mass foreclosures, Congress is focused on imprisoning ballplayers for lying about substances advertised in airline magazines.

Seduced on the cheap by a mass media simulcasting on ESPN and C-SPAN, they preened for the cameras with the desperation of starlets making a sex tape. Welcome to the war on steroids.

And welcome to your 110th Congress, doing the people's work--if by "people" we mean Congress. "This is one of the few things in a partisan, polarized town that the Republicans and Democrats are on the same page," gushed Rep. Tom Davis, ungrammatically. "It isn't on the budget or Iraq. But you've got to start somewhere." If last Tuesday was any indication of the actions of a united Congress, all I can say is pray for gridlock.

The day started with Sen. George Mitchell, the platinum-plated lobbyist whose report naming more than 80 players instigated this charade. Mitchell proceeded to compare the steroid issue with his role "bringing peace" to Northern Ireland. He said with a catch in his voice that the "most difficult and emotional" part of ending the Troubles was the release of prisoners. "I learned then," Mitchell said, "that sometimes you have to turn the page and look to the future, and I sincerely believe ... that baseball has got to look to the future, and the way to do that is to turn the page on the past."

He called these two situations "analogous." In Mitchell's mind, Roger Clemens must be a regular Bobby Sands. Sands was an IRA resistance fighter who died in notorious Long Kesh prison after a hunger strike. His face adorns revolutionary murals in Belfast.

Roger Clemens is a portly multimillionaire pitcher who appears to have used his ass as a pincushion so he can throw fastballs. How analogous.

But Mitchell's sanctimony was just chum in the water. He spurred Rep. Stephen Lynch to suggest Congress run its own Mitchell investigation--except that investigation would pack the power of subpoenas "and possible criminal charges."

Yes, let's put athletes under congressional subpoena and then either destroy their careers or send them to prison for taking something that's advertised in airline magazines.

After Mitchell's insipid oration, Rep. Christopher Shays (who seems to shiver with delight when ESPN enters the building) jumped at his chance like a teenager in a brothel. First he bashed the union, asking, "Why should cheating be a matter of collective bargaining?" Of course drug testing has always been a question of collective bargaining in every union workplace, but Shays has no need for facts.

Then he compared today's players to the those involved in the infamous "Black Sox" scandal when the 1919 Chicago White Sox threw the World Series. Except Shays referred to them as the "Chicago Blackhawks." That would be a hockey team.

ESPN writer Jayson Stark, in a live blog, commented: "Seems to me that if anyone in Congress is going to lecture baseball on how it runs its sport, that congressman ought to demonstrate at least some basic familiarity with the sport. Keep that in mind as you listen to Shays wax poetic throughout the day--and afterward."

"I could care less," Shays retorted. "I care about the kids." Well, some kids anyway. Shays didn't say a word when his Republican Party killed SCHIP, which would've provided health coverage to millions of uninsured children.

Then we got a civics lesson from Rep. Betty McCollum, who intoned that "every fan who has boughten a ticket to see the game for the past 20 years has been witness to a fraud." You read correctly, dear reader: "boughten." She also accused baseball of a "criminal conspiracy to defraud millions of baseball fans of millions of dollars over the past 15 years." She finished by saying: "It is time for a higher level of regulation of professional sports to ensure illegal drug abuse does not continue to defraud the American people who pay billions of dollars in ticket prices to attend supposedly legitimate and fair sporting events."

I don't even disagree with this. But sometimes the source is far more important than the message. George W. Bush can wax poetic about peace in the Middle East (or at least wax prosaic). It's still Bush, and that's where the conversation ends. The idea these blowhards have anything positive to contribute to a discussion about designer drugs is ridiculous. If there were ever a body that needed some measure of drug regulation, it's the U.S. Congress.

From 1998 to 2005 the pharmaceutical industry spent an absolutely unreal $758 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Big Pharm has more than 1,200 lobbyists in D.C.--more than two for every member of Congress.

More congressional regulation orchestrated by people who say "boughten" and think the Chicago Blackhawks play Major League Baseball is silly enough. But even if they sound like Abraham Lincoln crossed with Malcolm X, this is a body with negative credibility on anything relating to drugs or our health.