The next time you watch American Idol and fantasize about being a big celebrity, go stand in line at your local supermarket and think about how that's working out for whoever is on the cover of this week's edition of the National Enquirer.
Or, in the case of soiled superstar Roger Clemens, the front page of yesterday's New York Daily News.
You remember "The Rocket." He used to be a baseball hero ... a role model to millions ... the embodiment of the American Dream. Now, he's so tarnished that you could dip him into that miracle silver cleaner they advertise on late-night television and he'd still be stained beyond recognition.
The latest revelation, based on accounts from several unnamed sources, is that Clemens engaged in a 10-year affair with country singer Mindy McCready, who was just 15 years old when he met her in a karaoke bar in Fort Myers, Fla., in 1991. Clemens' attorney, Rusty Hardin, confirmed the long-standing friendship in an interview with the Daily News, but denied his client had a sexual relationship with the young singer.
It's probably fair at this point to draw your own conclusions, but the news that a popular baseball star might have had an extramarital fling after meeting a pretty woman on a road trip wouldn't normally rate a WWII ENDS!-sized headline if it weren't for all that had come before it in the tawdry Clemens steroid saga.
Quick review: The guy showed up in George Mitchell's long-awaited steroid report in December, and he immediately began a wide-ranging campaign to clear his name. He went on 60 Minutes and delivered an angry denial to Mike Wallace. He filed a defamation lawsuit against personal trainer Brian McNamee, who told Mitchell he had injected Clemens with human growth hormone. Clemens went before Congress and disputed witness statements by McNamee and earnest teammate Andy Pettitte.
Now, he's the subject of a federal perjury investigation because he kept stepping on his own story and because evidence kept popping up that called his credibility into further question.
If this weren't so sad, it would be funny, because Clemens would be enjoying his gilded retirement a lot more right now if he had just owned up to a few shots of hGH at the outset and gotten on with his life. What's even sadder is that he would have been better off confessing even if he really had nothing to confess.
That's the nature of celebrity in the 21st century. Clemens was found guilty the moment he was accused, whether he was actually guilty or not.
