Questioning Their Loyalty

The Barry Bonds trial started this week. For those of you not familiar with the case, Bonds is being brought to court not for using steroids, but for lying to Federal Investigators about it. (Numerous athletes confessed to using illegal steroids during the course of the investigation and no one really cared. Much like Richard Nixon, it's not the crime, but the cover-up that has gotten Bonds into trouble.) Now, most of the prosecutor's evidence comes from a man named Greg Anderson, who was Barry Bonds' close friend, personal trainer and private steroid supplier. However, Anderson has repeatedly refused to testify against Bonds and has already spent close to a year in jail for contempt of court. He's looking at even more jail time if he continues to refuse to take the stand. Personally, I don't care about Barry Bonds or whether or not he ends up in jail. Everyone knows he cheated and his legacy is already tarnished. Plus, I get the feeling people are only going after him so hard because Bonds is an admitted asshole and probably just pissed the prosecutors off. (Though, I will say that Anderson should ask himself if the roles were reversed would Bonds go to jail for him? Cause I bet he thinks he knows the answer and would be really surprised at the actual response.)

No, what keeps me amused here are all the sports radio talk show hosts who have decided that what Anderson is doing is the manly thing to do and have taken to the airways to repeatedly state they would gladly to jail for their buddies, because that is what bros do. "Loyalty above all else," they keep saying. Now, I have worked with more than a few of these guys during my time in radio and I can say, without pause, that this is bullshit. A couple of these guys have jumped stations and left their co-hosts to rot, so forgive me if I doubt their allegiances. They would roll over on their friends in a heartbeat and never think twice about it. Every person who ever took a journalism class has visions of being hauled off to jail rather than reveal their sources from some huge story they just broke, but the reality is that if you went into sports journalism it's because you want to work in the toy department of journalism, not the "I could get shot at or end up in jail" department of journalism. Ever notice how you never see the guy on the Dodgers beat suddenly get promoted to covering Iraq? That means, deep down, they're not really big on danger. I think the first time the jail door closed behind any of them they would turn around screaming for their lawyer because they were ready to confess everything. I get that it doesn't sound great on the radio, but at least it would be the truth.

-The big story of the day was that of the air traffic controller who was working the night shift at Reagan International Airport when he fell asleep. Luckily, it was a clear night and the two passenger jets who were inbound managed to communicate with each other to safely land on their own. Now, obviously that guy is going to be fired and rightfully so, but my bigger issue is the fact that he was the only person working. I understand it was a night shift and volume of flights is much lower that time of night, but I've had really stupid jobs in my life that wouldn't allow me to work alone and this guy was in charge of landing planes. What if it the guy wasn't an idiot, but instead had some kind of medical emergency? Shouldn't there be a backup ready to go? Besides, perhaps some stimulating conversation was just what this gentleman needed to stay awake. Still, I think the real reason this upsets me is that it calls into question every thing I saw in "Die Hard 2". If planes can land on their own, who cares if terrorists have taken over the tower?