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Show Wednesday, April 6,2005 The Signpost Page 10 Congress wants youth to get message about steroids that our elected congressional leaders conduct their business, ByGILLEBRETON and if you measured it as a Knight Ridder Tribune colossal waste of time, you either don't get it or you missed SURPRISE, Ariz. - In the end, the point. there was no witch hunt. For most of us, thankfully, Nobody had hidden video of the closest that we'll come to Jose Canseco," selling steroids a congressional hearing is that to the team batboy. No one scene in "Godfather II," where burst into the room, handcuffed just as Frankie Pentangeli is Sammy Sosa to the mahogany getting ready to testify, the "defense team" table and read him his Miranda Corleone (wink, wink) parades in with rights. In the end, yes, there was Frankie's long-lost brother grandstanding aplenty Thursday from Sicily. on Capitol Hill, as all 44 members Simply by seeing his brother of the House Committee on Vincenzo being "escorted" Government Reform seemed to (nudge, nudge) by the Corleone want to lob a few in front of the family, Frankie has a convenient ESPN cameras, and tell how they lapse of memory, and thereby once owned a Mark McGwire ruins the government's case. rookie card. And Michael Corleone walks But it was far from the free. aimless circus that some would Congressional committee have you believe. Baseball's day hearings, we learned Thursday, in Washington on Thursday are still governed by the same was government in action - winks and whims. blustery, unwieldy and hog-tied None of the Congress by protocol. It is simply the way members truly appeared to be expecting a public confession, as the six high-profile players, past and present, testified on Capitol Hill. The fact that McGwire melted under the pressure of the bright lights and his own apparent past sins turned out to be a tragic sideshow. The only people that Congress was looking to pillory seemed to be commissioner Bud Selig and his evil sidekick, Donfehr! WIN FREE PIZZA PICK THIS WEEK'S WINNERS! if "i PIZZERIA CIBCLE ONE FROM EACH HATCI-UP W$HTSW*)G ^ HMUM _-^ Orioles® Yankees Indians ©Tigers Red Sox @ Blue Jays Rangers @ Mariners As @ Marlins O c l -o ~ Too much drama. But thanks to the world-wide leader in sports, a highlight package was neatly capsulized for "SportsCenter," and real-life players from the Grapefruit to the Cactus leagues got to see Curt Schilling call Canseco a liar. "I watched it," Rangers pitcher R.A. Dickey said Friday. "I watched the whole thing." Dickey wasn't the only ns J -8 « iifiii 1 ml* nm E!i: tcsi tuts rat tt$n if tfttn 0 Utttatn NAM: u t J PHQMI* (Un)covering Genocide: o $ O vi c •§ 'O (W How the Media Cover Mass Killings Si 11™ ANNUAL WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY/HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATION t/1 v*_ Ia -9 £ a> 3 O 0) a> X) U Us, Pholo display of Darfur in tiva Drv^rsity Center April 7 Benyamin Horn/ Media Coverage of the Holocaust Noon Shepherd Union Wildcat Tneater a; i_ Beiiyamin Kom, the associiile director of the Oavid S. Wymon Institute of Hclccaiist Studies in Mulruse Purk, Pa., examinus America's response to tho Hokxiiust thruugr; resoaicn, education and publishing in tte prmi snri electronic rnedis. ra < Pictures Speak Louder than Words III iS ai 2, m April 11-22 -C a) April 8 Senator Elbert Thomas Day s 11 a.m. Special Colltcltons Aiea, Sttnvurl Library S Reading of proclamation from Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. declaring April 8 as Senator Elberi Thongs Day in honor cf the former member of Ine United States Congress from Utan wlio fought to protect the Jewish people of Europe dunng World War II. April 12 Amy Goodman / Independent Media in a Time of War Noon Shepherrj Union Wildcat Theater Amy Goodman, host and cxccutiw producer of Pacifica Ratlio'i shov* Democracy No*! is an award-winning journalist known lor her ?n-site, investigative coverage of events in Easi Twer. Nigeria, and Peru. g to April 14 William Schuiz / Witness to a Contemporary Genocide 7 p.m. Shepherd Union Rm. 33&-340 Since 1994, William Scnu!; ha.s served as the executive sireclc^ of Amnesty l^ternat-onat USA, an organization dedicated to tho human n#its of ail. Ho has been on invest-gat've missions to Liberia. Nortlieen Iruldf-J and Sudan. rjf 2 O April 15 Schindler's List, part of Reel Life Series 9 a.m. 1 p.ni Shepherd Union Wildcat Theater April 20 lev Kedem / Schindler's List: A Survivor Celebrates Life Noon Shepherd Union Ballroom From ages 8-11, Zev Kedtm lived in sw concentration carnos. He S'jrv.ved hy be=.ig placed or( Industrialist Oskar Schindler's list, until on Mir,/ 3. 19-5. he was Iterated by th<? J S . one, as it turned out. More than a dozen Rangers players gathered in front of a clubhouse TV set and turned up the volume on the hearings highlights. OK, OK, they made their point. And apparently, no one had toflyin a member of the Pentangeli family to produce the desired result. "I hope something positive will come out of it," said first baseman Mark Teixeira, who had termed the televised hearing "silly" just 24 hours before. "I still disagree with the way they seemed to attack baseball. "But, hopefully, this showed that the players are against steroids, and that kids need to know that we want it out of the game - completely out of the game." Exactly. As Teixeira so maturely discerned, Congress wasn't looking to hang any scarlet letters. It wants to save young lives. And if baseball isn't willing to deliver that message, then Congress seems prepared to impose a new antiperformance-enhancing drugs program on Major League Baseball that will. "People at the hearing kept saying that we had a 'grotesque problem' or a 'tremendous problem,'" Dickey said. "But what did the test results from last year say - 12 people tested positive? "Congress seemed to want us to adopt a 'zero tolerance* policy. 1 think, though, like Bud Selig said, that we need to give the new system time to work." Barely five years ago, another venerable institution came under congressional fire. Fix it yourself, Congress told the U.S. Olympic Committee - or we will fix it for you. In the months that followed, the USOC underwent a radical transformation, restructuring its organizational chart and increasing its accountability to Olympic athletes. It attacked the steroids issue head-on by turning over its drug monitoring program to the independent U.S. Anti-Drug Association (USADA). How serious is the USOC/ USADA program? Serious enough to have gone after some of most high-profile names in Olympic sports, including gold medalist Marion Jones. Congress wants baseball to deliver the same message, or it is threatening to intervene and impose a similar USOC/USADA system. "If that's what Congress is after, I wouldn't have a problem with that," Dickey said. "If the government tells us to do it," Teixeira added, "you probably have to iisten to them." Exactly, again. Or there will be more hearings, with more players and with more bright lights turned on them. THE SIGNPOST |