The trial is set to begin next March, with pretrial hearings and motions expected to begin in October. That means more money for the lawyers, and more expense to the taxpayers. No one's sure just how much this is costing us, but it's a lot. I'm sure they know. It's also costing Barry Bonds a considerable sum and of course the emotional stress of being on trial. I spent the time waiting in the courtroom to review my notes, to look at some of the articles written over the years. It's hard to say which aspect of this is the most egregious, but the antics of Congress with the help of the media is particularly annoying, especially since our elected officials have more important things to do than a sports oriented reality show soap opera.

When I moved to SF I was stunned at how conservative and mercenary the local politics were. The Democrats here weren't the least bit like the hardcore, populists, hardfisted DFL we had back in St Paul. California Democrats, especially those in the Machine, made Tammany Hall look like the Boy Scouts. The duplicity and venality of Feinstein as mayor sickened me; sure I was wrong to expect that female politicians would be better than male. When you think about it, doesn't that prove true equality? But you see, I grew up under the tutelage of Humphrey Commie Symp University of Minnesota Parlor Pinks during the Vietnam era. I learned about Hubert standing up to the Dixiecrats in DC about civil rights, which probably cost him two presidential elections. It cost us citizens two terms of Nixon. Now I know how the only GOP in the family, uncle Tom, felt when Nixon and Agnew took their falls. I remember he said of Ronald Reagan, "I think Nancy wants to be First Lady more than Ron wants to be President."

SF was a world class city when it was for Bohemians and not "family friendly." The first thing Feinsten did was unleash the developers, who plundered the City, tearing down wonderful buildings and putting up ugly Bauhaus rejects. From the City of Paris on, architectural taxidermy, a process of ripping the guts out of a building, putting in particle board, vinyl, plasterboard and plastic pipes, then folding up a strip mall for the ground floor, just ruined all that was most endearing. I think that constantly rebuilding a city once it has settled into itself is as disturbing and ugly as using plastic surgery, hormones, and other Tx to try to avoid looking one's age. It's expensive, ugly, and ultimately destructive. The more I learned about the history of SF the conclusion I came to was that it was a place that was prone to corruption. It's rather like the summer weather in SF, 5 days of fog, 2 days of warm sunny weather, then 5 days of cold windy fog. There are periods of extreme and perverse corruption and chicanery, with a term or two of reformers every so often when things got totally out of control. It's not that unusual in world history, it's the same lessons we seem to forget every generation or so.

The goings on in Sacramento were noxious, to say the least, and it was clear that things were going to get very bad in the state, and so they have. It's now an overpopulated, overdeveloped mess. The sense of entitlement the career politicians had, the imperial style of the leaders, the blatant patronage, nepotism and cronyism in City Hall and Sacramento, combined with the inherent problems of the patronage system, got us into this mess. Expecting those who got us here to lead us out doesn't make much sense. That's why I'm doilng all I can to help get John Dennis elected to Pelosi's seat. He's not a career politico, and the ironic fact about him is that his roots are as blue collar as they come, unilike our alleged Democrat officials, all born with silver spoons in their mouths (DiFi upgraded to platinum when she sold out the City to Shorenstein and gave her husband total control over trade with China, and that's about the least of her high crimes and misdemeanors while in office)

It's not just SF democrats who shamelessly pander to any cause that will get them TV coverage and points for being "compassionate." Henry Waxman stuck his pointy nose right in the middle of the idiotic Congressional hearings on steroids, pimping a dead teenager and blaming Barry Bonds for the death. The New York Times aided and abetted this maudlin attack on a nonissue, at a time when the nation was beginning to come apart at the seams. We had two unwinnable wars, the banks were teetering, the economy getting shakier than a tweaker on a week long run, Yet Congress abd the media led us on a rush to moral judgment. This is the sort of issue that has no place in Congress. Baseball is entertainment, as the Landis ruling stated.

Moral crusades need more than reasons, they need emotional imperatives to create a sense of righteousness, and eliminate any criticism. Case in point is the emotional blackmail of placing Brenda and Frank Marreno, parents of a steroid using teenager who committed suicide, upfront in the Congressional hearings, as reported in an article by George Vecsey in the NYTimes (Feb 10, 2008). Suicide is more common that most people realize, and th emost common victims are young males. The family and friends of suicide victims suffer from guilt, and seek to understand the motives of the victim. They often blame themselves, or in this case, the use of steriods, rather than try to understand that bad things happen, and you can’t stop bad things from happening no matter how good your intentions.

“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc” is a fallacy, caused by the tendency to believe that because something preceded an event, it caused the event. In the case of a son’s suicide, there is stong incentive to blame the steroid use for the suicide, to reduce the anxiety caused by the idea that the parents were responsible. We want to believe the world is a just, rational place, but it isn’t. Life isn’t fair, terrible things happen, often because of human malfeasance, sometimes for reasons that simply aren’t comprehensible. When you’re dealing with human behavior, there are far to many factors to consider, it’s never simple.

I don’t know why Efrain Marrero killed himself, in late 2004. I’m reasonably sure that steroids were not the proximal cause. Marrero was in the highest risk category for suicide, a young male, a junior college football player. His parents caught him with steroids and made him flush them away. Three weeks later, he shot himself. What is most disturbing is that they did not seek out any medical attention even though there were obvious signs and symptoms that something was very wrong. It would seem that the young man felt that he could not compete without 'roids, and felt that if he could not succeed in sports, life had no meaning. We as a society tend to focus only on the winner, and don't want to deal with the fact that only a tiny fraction can win at these games, make it to the top as an entertainer in any field. Most fail, and the sad tales of the failures in Hollywood aren't much different from the sad tales of the ones that didn't make the cut on the team. Nobody cares about Miss Congeniality, the silver medalist, the loser in the Series. We don't seem to want to understand that the odds are against you, and just because someone has to win the lottery, it doesn't change the astronomic odds, so don't bet the rent money.

It helps to have family and friends who will give you a shoulder to cry on, a place to vent your feelings of unfairness, of personal inadequacy, to give you the space to get over yourself. Then, there are those people whose inner demons are impossible to understand, or to control. In those cases, about all you can do is try to make sure that the person afflicted doesn't have access to weapons. Guns are the “weapon of choice” in Marrero’s demographic, which the antigun crusaders use to show that guns should be banned. I can’t help but wonder if the Marraros ever considered that access to a gun was both their responsibility and the cause of his suicide, but that wouldn’t be as attractive to Congress, since they don’t seem eager to ban guns.

Frank Marrero was a pilot in Iraq. He is now an airline pilot. I wonder if he thinks about the sorrow of the parents of the soldiers that he flew over? I wonder if he thinks about the traumatized vets who kill themselves? Would he be so eager to support the parents of those soldiers if they lobbyed Congress to end the war in Iraq? I doubt he’d be that “unpatritotic” since he’s got a well paying career due to the training he got from the Air Force, and a pension. He’s doing all right; he was smart enough and qualified enough to avoid the dangerous and traumatizing duties of a front line soldier. Would he be so eager to support the families of children who committed suicide attributed to various psychopharmaceuticals? I doubt it; he’d probably say they were crazy and their parents made them that way. The military looks down at any hint of mental illness, which is a factor in the poor care given to vets facing problems due to the horrors of war, something no pilot could know.

“The Marreros are treated with dignity by legislators like Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, . . .’Their presence speaks volumes,’ Waxman said . . .”They want to educate the American public . Their message is, what’s happening to our kids? People think it’s O.K. to take drugs, to cheat. What the Marreros are giving is a different message.” Oh, please, Mr. Waxman, do try to interface with reality. We are a nation of drug using cheaters, we take drugs for being unhappy, to facilitate recreational sex, there is no institution that doesn’t cheat, so it’s time to stop scapegoating Barry Bonds and baseball. Entertainers aren’t role models. Mark Maguire didn’t give Marrero a gun and tell him to shoot himself.

If you’re thinking I’m being insensitive and might feel differently if “it happened to me,” well, it has. I have lost a family member to suicide, and it hurt like hell. It still does. I find offensive and shameless to publicly expose matters that should be kept private. Throwing a pity party for yourself may be, in this era of Oprah and Maury, more common, but it’s still disgraceful Losing a loved one to suicide isn’t any different from any other sudden loss, to accident, to criminal violence, to random chance. It’s just a part of being human, it could be said that the pain is the price we pay for love. It’s not going to help the Marreros to attribute the suicide to steroids, to assuage the fear that maybe it was their fault, maybe they should have taken away their son’s guns as well as his steroids.

It is contemptible for Congress to use the pain of the Marreros to push their agenda, it’s not much different from the motives of the “Girls Gone Wild” producers to profti from the mistakes in judgement that drunken young women make. It’s ethically inexcusable for a journalist to perpetuate the witchhunt against certain athletes, in Congress’s transparent attempt to distract the public from their incompetance in dealing with real problems they should be working on. There is also the creepy, necronarcissistic reaction of "grieving parents" who use their child's death as a springboard to fame, an unheallty obsession with the deceased child, making the tragedy the new focus of life. I am reminded of Miss Havisham, one of Dicken's most tragic characters.

I used to have respect for the integrity of the NYTimes, but when they publish such unmitigated propaganda like “Parents and fans can learn from the Mitchell report, . .. But they must understand that no lucrative sport can be trusted with testing; it must be done by an impartial outside agency.” I have to put them in the same category as Fox News or any other pusher of half truths and “Defending the Indefensible” codswallop.

Mr Vecsey, have you no sense of decency? Mr Waxman, don't you have better things to do with your time? Mr Morreno. let your son rest in peace. Prancing around at sporting events exploiting your loss isn't going to help anyone. Trying to assuage your guilt to convincing yourself that you're helping others is self serving bollocks. Your grief is just a part of life. You get born, you get hurt, people leave you, people die, you leave people, and you die. Looking for some meaning in it all can make you act like a jerk when you latch on to a moral crusade instead of trying to find out what the real problem is.