The Port Arthur News
April 29, 2008 09:11 pm
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Somebody wake up Mike Wallace. It looks like Roger Clemens is going to need him for another softball interview, so he can look in the camera and tell 60 Minutes viewers, “I did not have sex with that woman.”
Oops, that’s Bill Clinton’s line. Sorry, Roger, you will have to come with up something more original.
In the meantime, if I’m Mindy McCready, I’d be really careful on that next phone conversation with the Rocket. He’s probably having it taped. She might want to check with Brian McNamee on just how nasty old Roger can get when he’s backed into a corner.
After all, he even threw his wife under the bus during Congressional testimony. And that opened the door for us to learn that Debbie Clemens and Jose Canseco’s wife once compared boob jobs at a party in Florida. The party the Clemens’ supposedly didn’t attend.
Chances are, however, McCready, who has tearfully confirmed a New York Daily News story of a decade long affair with Clemens, simply “misremembered” what actually took place over all those years. Clemens, being the humanitarian and great family man that he is, was simply being a nice guy helping a struggling young singer.
So what if he was 28 and she was 15 when the “friendship” began. Don’t most 28-year-old guys have a hot, 15-year-old girl they take under their wing? Shoot, he probably even tipped her off on the pain-killing value of Lidocaine.
If you want the real truth on this latest outrage, just listen to good-old-boy attorney Rusty Hardin. Rusty is stomping his foot again, screaming the McCready story is part of a conspiracy between McNamee’s lawyers and the Daily News to trash Clemens.
“There’s no question in my mind that this is really a filthy smear campaign orchestrated by McNamee’s lawyers clearly intended to do anything they can to bring down Roger’s reputation,” Hardin told the Houston Chronicle.
Well, if it is, and the charges are bogus, then Hardin plainly has himself another defamation of character lawsuit to file on his client’s behalf. But Hardin should be smart enough to understand no newspaper this side of the National Enquirer would come with stuff this strong unless they had ironclad proof to back it up.
Otherwise, Hardin and Clemens will pretty much own themselves said newspaper.
In the meantime, I don’t see anything short of another Congressional hearing clearing up this latest potential scandal. The perfect guy to chair it is Dan Burton, the Republican from Indiana who slobbered all over Clemens at the last hearing, then lashed out at McNamee for being a sleazebag once accused of a sex crime.
As a staunch conservative strong on family values, Burton certainly has the qualifications to be the lead gavel pounder at Clemens-McCready hearings. Why? Because he once fathered a child out of wedlock with an Indiana state employee.
He could stick a flag pin in his lapel, put himself in the Rocket’s shoes, maybe get a burr haircut and torch all this nonsense about a true American hero.
Hardin, on the other hand, should have sat Clemens down several months ago, before he decided to go nuclear on McNamee, and told him about Gary Hart.
Hart, of course, was the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. Suspected of being a philanderer, he defiantly told the New York Times to follow him around, that it would be very boring.
The Times and other publications took him up on the offer and uncovered an affair with a woman named Donna Rice. Among the evidence was a photo of Rice sitting on Hart’s lap on a yacht appropriately named Monkey Business.
That was the end of Gary Hart’s political career.
The moral to the story, which Hardin should have communicated to Clemens on day one, was that you should be very, very careful about calling people out, if you have any monkey business in your background. Since he apparently didn’t get the message, Clemens is learning that playing hardball is not nearly as much fun when somebody else has the ball.
In all probability, none of this mess would have materialized if Clemens had either denied the steroid use charged in the Mitchell Report and moved on, or done like Andy Pettitte and fessed up. Like Pettitte , he could just have said he made a mistake, apologized to fans and gone back to being a celebrity.
Americans in general and sports fans in particular are forgiving. Two weeks later, it would have been a non issue. Clemens, who was still getting hero treatment in Houston when it was becoming increasingly obvious he’d taken steroids, would have been hoisted back up on the pedestal.
Instead, he decided to stake out the moral high ground and defend his honor. He bashed McNamee, bashed the media, bashed anybody who didn’t believe he was the second coming of John Wayne. Not a bad approach, if you can pull it off. Dumber than dirt, if you’ve got skeletons.
Now, Clemens not only has to sweat out possible perjury charges, he’s about to get battered in the court of public opinion for being such a phony. On the other hand, if he really wanted to do something to help McCready’s career, this ought to do it.
That comeback she was planning just got a jump start? They will be playing her records again in Nashville. Can a tell-all book be far behind? Reckon this former jailbird has the character to turn down a seven figure advance from a publisher?
In conclusion, I must admit there is one part of the Daily News story that troubles me. Reference was made to Clemens and McCready being holed up in the trendy SoHo Grand in New York and later partying with Monica Lewinsky and Michael Jordan.
Monica Lewinsky? Michael, please say it ain’t so. Surely you aren’t that desperate, are you? That is absolutely slanderous. You need to call Rusty Hardin and sue the Daily News?
Sports editor Bob West can be e-mailed at rdwest@usa.net. His Sportsrap radio show airs Mondays at 8:05 p.m. on KLVI (560-AM).
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