It was an interesting week for those of us who like to see these people who moan that the world has gone morally bankrupt proven to be the fools that they are. If you blinked, you may have missed it.
Zell Miller, the barking Georgia (Democrat) last seen challenging Chris Matthews to a duel after the Republican National Convention, showed up on The Daily Show to promote his new book, A Deficit in Decency. Miller makes the usual complaints that we're a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, why can't things be like they were in the '50s, blah, blah, blah. Miller pointed to these damn, steroid-taking baseball players as yet another example that all that was good is now gone. It was also interesting that his examples of respectable old timers were all white (Mickey Mantle) and the modern players were all black.
An interesting thing happened the very next day. Former Major League pitcher Tom House told the SF Chronicle that he used steroids, growth hormone and anything else he can get his hands on in the '60s and '70s. He also said that his behavior was what you might call the norm.
So what do you know? It would appear that athletes today are exactly as indecent as they were 40 years ago. It may not seem so significant what ballplayers put into their bodies, but this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to slap the crazy out of Zell Miller. This manufactured outrage over how far our morals have slipped is never, never based on fact. Do you think there's just too darn much sex on TV these days? Well, about a hundred years ago that wasn't a problem, but there were 230 people lynched in America in a single year. I'll take a deficit in decency over a surpluss of lynchings any day.
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