60 Minutes I'll Never Get Back

Infamous investigative reporter Mike Wallace sat down with Roger Clemens recently and conducted a candid, brutally exhaustive, and no-holds-barred interview that aired tonight on CBS's 60 Minutes.

No, not really. They sipped tea, talked about the old days, and shot the breeze at Rog's Ranch. Then they played Parcheesi. (Roger let Mike win.) Oh, and camera crews happened to record some of it.

A single version of Mike Wallace's biographic synopsis contains each of the following snippets of text:

• "hard-hitting investigative journalist"
• "grilled with provocative questions"
  
• "probing personality reporter"
• "the nervy Wallace"
• "hard edge lacking in most television talk"
• "pointed, even mischievous questions that made guests squirm"
• "framed in tight close-up, revealing the sweat elicited by Wallace's barbs and the show's harsh klieg lights"
• "Mike Malice"
• "the Terrible Torquemada of the TV Inquisition"
• "the abrasive, tough-guy reporter"
• "reputation as a bruising inquisitor who gave his subjects 'Mike fright'"
• "most familiar modus operandi: the ambush interview"
• "'make-'em-sweat' interviews"

There was nothing like a classic Mike Wallace interview . . . and tonight's airing was nothing like a classic Mike Wallace interview. By most accounts, he's lost his fastball.

WALLACE: And never anabolic steroids?
CLEMENS: Never.
WALLACE: Swear?
CLEMENS: Swear.
WALLACE: Pinky promise?

Clemens and Wallace interlock pinkies.

CLEMENS: Pinky promise. Cross my heart and hope for a free pass, stick a needle in my ass.
WALLACE: Well'p, good enough for me!

Cut to narration about Brian McNamee in a dubious manner.

Somewhere in a Denny's, Michael Moore weeps.

More stuff that made me cackle...

And if I have these needles and these steroids and all these drugs, what, where did I get ‘em? Where is the person out there gave ‘em to me? Please, please come forward.

Ah, yes. Memo to drug dealers: come forward, confess your crime, and face jail time; if you don't, I must be innocent. In a related plea, the writers at Gheorghe have never smoked banana peels or other illegal substances. If any such dealers would please come forward and proclaim their and our guilt to the world, please do. Otherwise, we're clean.

"My body never changed. If he's putting that stuff up in my body, if what he's saying which is totally false, if he's doing that to me, I should have a third ear coming out of my forehead. I should be pulling tractors with my teeth."

What?? How many ears is Jose Canseco sporting these days? I don't know much (can I get an amen?), but extra body parts growing out of one's face isn't a side effect of steroids or HGH, though it is a side effect of Levitra and Lipitor. (Can I digress for a moment? Was anyone listening during the commercial for Mirapex, a drug to combat "restless leg syndrome," when they said a side effect was compulsive gambling? Really?? Did I hear that right?? So my leg's no longer shaking, which is good. Of course, it's probably because my bookie's toughie knee-capped me.)

And Clemens' body has changed -- not quite to the drastic degree that the caricature known as Barry Bonds' did, but ask Bill Simmons or just visit Google images for a bevy of side-by-side photos showing an obvious trend towards lumpy suddenly halted by hard work, determination, and . . . B-12.

That's the tidbit that was leaked late last week -- that Rajah's defense has changed from "I did not provide Brian McNamee with any drugs to inject into my body" (a wiggle-room special to begin with) to "Yes, lidocaine and B-12." Most with knowledge in the field have laughed at the possibility that Clemens was injecting B-12 into himself. But that's his story.

Meanwhile, those of us who've lied to cover up a lie before think the entire thing is laughable. You can't bullshit a bullshitter, a veteran bullshitter once told me, and it's piling up down in Texas.

It went on in pointless fashion, with the obligatory misinformation about how steroids don't work and a nice red herring Vioxx sidetrack. We could continue to nitpick the finer points of what we presume is utter crap and bold-faced lying, but what would be the point? In fact, what was the point of this whole exercise? Why tap a 60 Minutes legend (who, by his own admission, is a pale shell of his former pitbull self) to interview him when the world already knows they're friends? That Wallace conducted what was, relatively speaking, a congenial puff piece of an interview when Clemens appears so plainly guilty made the entire segment a thoroughly futile affair. This was where I think we really saw the kid gloves:

WALLACE: How about a lie detector test?
CLEMENS: Some say they're good. Some say they're not. Do whatever. I mean—
WALLACE: So as far as you're concerned you would conceivably?
CLEMENS: Yeah. I don't know if they're good or bad.
WALLACE: Were you to pass a lie detector test, would that help prove that you're telling the truth and help restore?
CLEMENS: Would it?
WALLACE: I don't know.
CLEMENS: I don't either.

To go from the initial question, one with serious potential, into this pathetic group shrug-'n'-smile, is very telling. Here's how "the Terrible Torquemada of the TV Inquisition" of yesteryear would've handled that exchange:

WALLACE: How about a lie detector test?
CLEMENS: Some say they're good. Some say they're not. Do whatever. I mean—
WALLACE: So is that a yes, I'll take it or a no, I refuse?
CLEMENS: Yeah. I don't know if they're good or bad.
WALLACE: That doesn't sound like the confidence of an innocent man.
CLEMENS: What good would it do? There are so many people who have decided I'm guilty until proven innocent-
WALLACE: So if this were one sure-fire means of restoring the faith, why wouldn't you be on the phone right now setting up an appointment?
CLEMENS: But I don't know if they're good or bad.
WALLACE: Oh, if you're guilty, they're decidedly bad.

Cut to CBS crew pulling a polygraph out of their van and bringing it to Clemens.

(Side Note: In high school I did my senior speech on the validity of the polygraph, and a good portion of my quotes came from a 60 Minutes segment on the subject from 1986 in which they tore the lie detector's reliability apart; maybe that's why Mike Wallace was so reluctant to attack Roger's shaky answer to the question?)

But there really was no point to it. In Clemens' defense, there is no way he can prove his innocence. If he's guiltless, he's screwed. But what does engaging in soft-toss with Mike Wallace get you? And the session with reporters tomorrow? What can it possibly accomplish?

Oh, I know the answer to that one. A date with Congress. According to several affiliated folks, if Clemens had kept his quiet, he wouldn't have been called to testify under oath. Now that he's insinuated that the Mitchell Report is erroneous, they have to hear him out. Under oath. Did we mention it's going to be under oath? Now there are three possible outcomes:

1. He doesn't show. Guilt is presumed.

2. He pulls a McGwire and pleads the 5th. Guilt is presumed.

3. He denies wrongdoing. Perjury investigation commences, indictment looms.

All because he felt the need to get on the telly, play the victim, bemoan the sad, unfair state of this country's treatment of its superstars, and simply perpetuate the marathon of brazen dishonesty in steroid use -- one that doesn't begin or end with Roger Clemens, just stars him in the current episode. With every proclamation of his innocence, there will be more bloodlust in the heart of the public. Clemens is a tough Texan, though; he may see this thing to the end in ways people from Andy Pettite to Marion Jones couldn't stomach.

Roger Clemens didn't need or want any of this. He just wanted to retire and ride off into the sunset until his curtain call in Cooperstown to pick up his placque, make a speech, and fail to thank anyone. Now he has some serious crap to address, and he's brought much of it on himself.

And tonight's waste of 20 minutes of my time did nothing to sway me from the notion that it couldn't happen to a better guy. Enjoy, Rajah.

[Worth mentioning: I may just be bitter that watching this segment led directly to my inadvertently sticking around to witness Andy Rooney's corpse deliver a xenophobic, grotesquely unfunny assault on the diversity of surnames among the presidential candidates. "Did you ever notice how much better this country was when it was mostly white Anglo-Saxon Protestants?" Screw you, Roger, if only for that.]