Depends on the definition

Republicans and their media backers love to bring up former President Bill Clinton's "depends on what the definition of 'is' is" prevarication from his civil suit testimony, which led of course to his impeachment. Now one of their favorite sons might be playing the same game.

Of course, you remember Roger Clemens' testimony on Capitol Hill regarding his HGH/steroid use, and how the Republican lawmakers fawned over the multiple-time Cy Young winner, while Democrats seemed to back skeevy trainer Brian McNamee. Now, it's come to light that Clemens apparently has been diddling the fiddle of country singer Mindy McCready, and the relationship may or may not have started when she was a lass of 15.

Clemens, through his well-compensated mouthpiece Rusty Hardin, has categorically denied all charges ... or has he? Here's the salient sentence in the statement Hardin released in support of his client: "At no time did Roger engage in any kind of inappropriate or improper relationship with her."

Of course, that depends on what your definition of "inappropriate" is. Clemens left himself some wiggle room here (much more than he's left in his 42-waist trousers these days). One could argue that if Clemens and his wife Debbie have an "open" relationship, then having sex with McCready wasn't inappropriate in that sense. And given Clemens' demonstrated gift of self-delusion, it's not a big leap to suggest that he's convinced himself that he thought McCready was 18 when they met (she was singing karaoke in a bar, after all), thus she was the one who engaged in an inappropriate relationship and he did nothing wrong.

It's the same kind of logic he's used to avoid taking responsibility for his gargantuan head and roid-rage outbursts that have marked his last 10 years or so -- i.e., I thought McNamee was putting B-12 in my butt, so if he put steroids in those needles, it's not my responsibility.

Thus continues the sad, comical, and all-too-predictable fall from grace of one of the game's best pitchers. Give Barry Bonds some credit here -- at least he knew when to shut up.

Book review: The Devil in the White City

Just wrapped up Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City," a look back at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the heinous crimes of America's first known serial killer, H.H. Holmes.

My wife read it first and highly recommended it, so that might have established unrealistic expectations, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the pace of the book. First of all, it's hard to categorize it, because it's neither fish nor fowl. It's a novelization of the actual events surrounding the World's Fair, including tremendous detail (even excruciating detail) on the process the fatcats of Chicago went through to gain the rights to host the fair and the construction of the buildings and preparation of the grounds.

I say excruciating, because unless you're an architecture wonk, the first 200 or so pages are going to be a bit of a bore. I love history and true crime stories, so I thought this would be a great fit for me, but instead much of it read like the minutes from a series of committee meetings. Larson tried like hell to get me interested in the lives of the various architects and barons of the Chicago business community at the turn of the century, especially Daniel Burnham, the man he describes as most responsible for the fair's success.

But the problem is, this was really two books. The story of the fair takes up about 75% of the text, while the rest centers on the fascinatingly creepy Dr. Holmes. Larson generally alternates chapters, with one focusing on Burnham and the fair and the next on Holmes, with the pacing of the story leading me to expect some kind of great intersection of the two plots.

Alas, there's precious little payoff there. I was hoping there would be a big chase scene through the fair, or an American version of Sherlock Holmes tracking the devious killer through the "White City," but it just didn't happen that way. The murders took place at the same time as the fair, and many of the victims were lured to Chicago by the fair, but they really didn't have anything to do with the fair.

In the end, I realized that I learned a lot about what made the 1893 Chicago World's Fair such a historically significant event, but I wanted to know even more about the killer and his evil deeds. I guess I'll have to wait for the movie, which is supposed to be coming out next year. If it focuses as much on the architects as Larson did, it will make "Ishtar" look like "The Matrix."

MMM: Shout-out to my frozen homies

This week's Meltdown is a call for an actual meltdown of a sort -- consider it a plea to the weather gods for some relief in the Upper Midwest. They've been having a "spring" like none I can ever remember. The StarTribune of Minneapolis reports today that if the flurries that are forecast for today actually arrive, it will be the first time in almost 100 years that the Land O' Lakes has seen four straight days of snow this late in the season.

My in-laws live in the beautiful lakes region in the north-central part of the state, and they've thrilled the Little Gophers with e-mailed photos of fresh snow drifts piled up on their property throughout April. The images thrilled me too, in the sense that I'm not there having to deal with that snow.

Minnesotans are a hardy sort, of course, and most of this snow will melt quickly -- the forecast calls for sunny and 63 by Wednesday in Minneapolis -- so I'm not worried that suicide hotline calls will spike in the Twin Cities the way they did, say, in Green Bay when Breffarve sort-of retired last month.

But this kind of late snow can have a debilitating short-term affect on the psyche of the citizens. I only recall one brutal April snowstorm -- 1982, the year the Metrodome opened, and the Twins were patting themselves on the back for their good fortune as the Teflon bubble protected them from a nasty squall about 10 days into the season. But by the time that March rolls around, every Minnesotan worth his or her road salt is sick to death of the white stuff and is ready to get outside and play baseball, hit the links, or just dig around in the garden and get some dirt under his or her nails.

So to be faced with this kind of extended brutality in the last week of April is nothing short of cruel. I mean, a number of high schools from northern Minnesota have yet to play their first baseball game, outdoors at least. St. Cloud State had to cancel its spring football game because of the latest snowstorm. Schools are still closing early or starting late due to inclement weather. Bring on spring, once and for all, in the Upper Midwest!

Why televised debates suck

Bashing Political Punditry Week continues with this astounding op-ed piece by the New York Times' Frank Rich, decrying the performance of ABC debate moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos in the latest Clinton-Obama jawfest last week in Philadelphia.

By all accounts, the questions asked by ABC's tag-team tandem fell woefully shy of probing the issues that actually matter to most Americans. Or should matter to most Americans. Instead of addressing bottom-line issues like the economy, the war in Iraq, or health care, we got more of the usual schtick, with breathless questions about "Bittergate," Serbian snipers and tenuous connections to long-forgotten controversial figures.

Here's the money shot:

"In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn’t take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don’t. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won’t show up in November because 'they never have before' and 'they’ll be tired.'"

Read on ...

Why political coverage sucks

From Glen Greenwald of Salon.com:

"Our elections are dominated by the same tired personality script, trotted out over and over and over. Democrats and liberals -- no matter how poor their upbringing, no matter how self-made they are, no matter how egalitarian their policies -- are the freakish, out-of-touch elitists who despise the values of the Regular Americans. Right-wing leaders -- no matter how extravagantly rich they are by virtue of other people's money, no matter how insulated their lives are, no matter how indifferent their policies are to the vast rich/poor gap -- are the normal, salt-of-the-earth Regular Folk. These petty, cliched storylines drown out every meaningful consideration and dictate our election outcomes, and they are deployed automatically.

"It doesn't matter what the candidates actually say or do. The establishment press just waits for the right episode and then reflexively and eagerly fills in the gaps in the shallow script -- the script with which they are intimately familiar and which serves as their only framework for talking about and understanding political disputes."

Read on ...