Judging Clemens

Did Clemens lie about high and steroids? Did he lie about it? I certainly can’t tell from watching the video and listening to the reports on this morning’s CBS reports. I can tell that there is an assumption of guilt on the part of Charlie Rose and his guests. They have followed the story better than I have, so they might be right. What I don’t get is the apparent need on the part of news programs, despite having been caught in embarrassing judgments previously, the judgments continue. It’s casual editorializing, not like Fox where the editorial content is rarely based on fact. There are clear facts here, but long before a jury pronounces the news reporters and talking heads are already announcing why perpetrator is guilty. I think it is partly a result of the 24 hour news cycle. There’s always a push to pronounce judgment, and judgment is more interesting than dispassion. At the same time we’ve been lied to so often by government and business that we automatically assume we’re being lied to now. And we’ve come to distrust the courts. All of us saw the police just wailin’ away on Rodney King twenty years ago. None of the people were held accountable for that beat down. So why not just go ahead and make our own minds up about the s-o-by’s who have been offending us, breaking the law, whatever? Why not. Everybody else does, except the people we feel are supposed to do it. I don’t think that this is what journalists are actually thinking, but what they’re actually doing. The rest of us, we’re eager to join in the judgments.