The Distinguished Gentleman and the undistinguished gentleman

Don’t you love it when politicians talk about things they know very little about? You know, because they’re so busy making sure everything’s running so smoothly in ‘merica? Here’s Harry Reid, one of our leading political hacks:

Reid, enjoying a pleasant conversation before turning to politics, mentioned that the Yankees Ichiro Suzuki is closing in on 3,000 hits in 11 U.S. seasons (13) and but had more than 1,000 in Japan before that. Reid said he will be worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Then Reid stood up for Charlie Hustle.

”And let’s also bring in Pete Rose. He has been punished enough,” Reid said.

”He (Rose) has been (punished) for years,” Reid said. “He bet when he was a manager of a team. Games were lost. All that stuff. But he’s been punished enough. He is one of the great baseball players of all time. He didn’t take drugs (PEDs) so yes; I think he should be in.”

Dang it, Harry, you had me until the end. If you’re conflating gambling and drugs, you’re just doing it wrong. Baseball-wise, anyway. I would say this is just more proof that politicians are intellectually lazy ... but that would make them different from 95 percent of everyone else how, exactly? Granted, we do want our elected leaders to demonstrate some real brain power ... or then again, maybe we don’t. Considering how much politicians seem to despise good science, maybe we should assume the worst.

Anyway, Harry did have me on his side until the end. Pete Rose probably has been punished enough. Major League Baseball’s penalty for betting on your own team is a permanent suspension. Maybe you think that’s perfectly fair. If so, you must really despise the National Football League’s penalty for the same crime: a one-season suspension.

Maybe that’s not enough. But isn’t there a happy medium in there somewhere? Ten years? Twenty? Wouldn’t a twenty-year suspension serve as a perfectly effective deterrent?

Now, I know that at least one of you is going to respond with this: “Maybe a permanent suspension is too long. But Rose knew the penalty when he bet, so he can’t get off now.”

Really? That’s your argument? Let us imagine that a young man is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread for his family. AT THAT TIME, the standard sentence for such a heinous crime is 50 years on a chain gang. But somehow, 20 years later good sense prevails and the penalty for bread-stealing is dropped to just 10 years. Are you going to make our poor sap rot away in jail for another 30 years?

If so, congratulations: You’re officially the Meanest Man in the World.