I had wondered since the State of the Union Speech: Why would George W Bush spend 99 words on the rather irrelevant topic of steroid abuse in professional sports?

Granted, the heads of Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds keep getting squarer and squarer with each passing year(*), but… Who gives a frick?

Just in case the viewer had thought that Bush’s stand against Big Steroid was a whole lot of Hot Air (akin to last year’s SOTU speech promises to fight AIDs in Africa, his push for hydrogen- fueled cars, his proposal to expand Americorp, etc etc etc): the White House is pushing right ahead to organize a Summit of the various Professional Sports League to do battle with the forces of Big Steroid.

Sure to be a majour story on Sports Radio, ESPN and sporting websites.

Wait a minute!

He just by-passed the “news filters” of the psuedo-Legitimate press that Bush was aggrieved by. (Thus, he launched that pr offensive of scheduled softball interviews with local news stations last summer.)…

And he just found his way into “fuzzy news story” land with a parallel news media, prone to discussion of the trivial, with a large male audience (generically patriotic, the so-called “NASCAR Dad”).

Or am I off into la-la land here?

…………………………
(*)Apologies to Sosa and Bonds. I have no idea why their heads are squarer than they used to be, and do not wish to imply use of performance-enhancing drugs, or for that matter corked bats, for which I have no evidence or reason to have evidence — except for the “corked bats” bit. Besides which, I vaguely recall that Sosa was cleared of the charge last summer in a highly publicized testing.

Update: Bonds = Mr. Square Head.

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