The Hypocrite Vote on Mark McGwire

Jim Caple lays out why voting against Mark McGwire is hypocritical:

You knew McGwire was taking andro in 1998′s home run chase and suspected he was taking something much stronger but nonetheless repeatedly wrote stories glorifying his deeds and crediting him with “saving baseball.” You now have no additional evidence other than those same old suspicions, but you are nonetheless repeatedly writing stories condemning his actions and blaming him for ruining baseball. Therefore you clearly must not vote for McGwire, because that was then and this is now.

You constantly ridicule grandstanding politicians and bureaucratic government committees in your columns but when you saw grandstanding politicians drag McGwire before a bureaucratic government committee, you were appalled that he did not show the proper respect by fully answering their questions. You feel that he greatly damaged his reputation, effectively admitted his guilt and gave the sport a black eye by saying, “I am not here to talk about the past.” You also write stories claiming that the government has no right to force reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams to testify before a grand jury, and that it will cripple the First Amendment if they so much as state their names. Therefore you must not vote for McGwire because everyone knows he should have testified when he was subpoenaed while reporters should never have to do so under the well-established legal principle of “that was him, and this is us.”

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