I could not resist this. 2 days ago Patrick J. Fitzgerald from the US Justice Department gave a press conference about the whole Scooter indicitment, where he used a baseball analogy to explain…..I actually have no idea!
…Let me then ask your next question: Well, why is this a leak investigation that doesn’t result in a charge? I’ve been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try.
I know baseball analogies are the fad these days. Let me try something.
If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head, and it really, really hurt them, you’d want to know why the pitcher did that. And you’d wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, I’ve got bad blood with this batter. He hit two home runs off me. I’m just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can.
You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to throw the ball anywhere near the batter’s head. And there’s lots of shades of gray in between.
You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back and it hit him in the head because he moved. You might want to throw it under his chin, but it ended up hitting him on the head.
And what you’d want to do is have as much information as you could. You’d want to know: What happened in the dugout? Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at? Did he talk to anyone else? What was he thinking? How does he react? All those things you’d want to know.
And then you’d make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether they should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, Hey, the person threw a bad pitch. Get over it.
In this case, it’s a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn’t to one person. It wasn’t just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.
And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?
Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?
And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He’s trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view…
i heard that live on the radio and was thinking to myself: boy some people feel like they HAVE to give you an analogy even if it is the most obvious thing to explain. i guess he was trying to appeal to the layman and tackle the issue as if it were another baseball doping scandal
Nas! i know u watched the movie Chicago…dont you remember the part when the lawyer is trying to get Roxy off and he bursts into song…”just give them the old razzel dazzel…how can they see with stars up in their eyes!” thats what this is, the old razzel dazzel.
jameed, i think it’s left over white sox fever!
fad, i have no idea what ure talking about but i am smiling and nodding! 😀
Nas,
Alluding to sports in their analogies isn’t something novel, it happens all the time. In recent history it was utilized during the confirmation hearing of chief justice John Robert. Mr. Roberts stated in his testimony that he doesn’t pitch or bat, but he is like an umpire, he calls it as he sees it. In other words, he is only interested in applying the law. Several days later Senator Arlen Specter questioned him about that statement and the dialogue using the sports analogy went on for almost fifteen minutes of testimony, followed by back and forth dialogue between Judge Robert and senator specter.
Hatem, lol, I know but isn’t it funny when they ramble on to the point where they don’t know what they’re talking about?