Congressional hearings are great fun, aren't they? Where would we be without flashbacks of Joe McCarthy interrogating wide-eyed college professors and book club members on the merits of Das Kapital? How about Al Gore going toe-to-toe with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister?

If it's not how rock music is turning children into devil worshippers bent on killing themselves or others through gross acts of fashion sense, then it's the President's cigar-warming habits. And now the United States Congress smells blood in the world of pine tar and spit balls? I guess it was only a matter of time before they hauled Mark McGwire before the cameras and poked him until he wept his way through a whole box of Kleenex. Apparently some Representatives needed a little face time on the evening news.

Yes, the latest craze in inquisitional subject matter: steroids, and how they taint the purity of America. Democrats and Republicans alike opened the proceedings with laments for the good old days of baseball when they were kids collecting bubblegum cards and looking up to the legends of the game; grand talk of role models and symbols of all that was good sullied with the taint of steroids <sniff> <sniff>.

And if that wasn't enough, they had the spectacle of McGwire, the Paul Bunyan of baseball, sniveling like a schoolgirl and taking the fifth (well, maybe it was more a case of taking the fifth about taking the fifth...maybe, though you should probably talk to his lawyer) on his alleged past abuses with the modern-day evil of steroids (cue the music, perhaps something sad like the theme to Love Story).

Representative William Lacy Clay got so worked up that he wants Mark McGwire Highway to be renamed. It seems he thinks kids sort out their pharmaceutical shopping lists based on roadway nomenclature.

And that was the main point of the proceedings: the example set for the youth of America (cue The Star-Spangled Banner).

Since 1990, it has been illegal in America to sell steroids or use them without a doctor's prescription. This offence is supposedly punishable by one (for use) to five (for selling) years in prison. And how many professional athletes who have tested positive for steroids have actually gone to jail? Well, let's just say that most congressmen have faced as many big-league fastballs as they've witnessed big-league steroid convictions.

Has anybody from the US Attorney's Office been dragged before a microphone to answer for their failure to apply the laws against steroids? Are there not questions to be asked of the people who couldn't fit in so much as one indictment for steroid use amidst their frenzy to lock up half of America for smoking joints and popping Ecstasy in their ever-futile war on drugs?

You want Major League Baseball players to stop using steroids? Take the first one who fails a steroid test and send him to prison for a year. End of problem.

You want to set an example for youth? Cast your net wider and with a lot more authority.

Bernard Ebbers, former CEO of WorldCom, was recently convicted of an $11-billion fraud and faces 85 years in prison (I'm giving three-to-one that he does only eight months and is munching on drumsticks with Martha Stewart by next Christmas), but have his middle-managing subordinates who turned the other way and bleated the time-honoured "I was just following orders" been subjected to the glare of the public spotlight while they explain their questionable backbone and integrity? Why are the professors who teach MBAs to swim like sharks through governmental red tape, and eat like them behind closed doors, not being subpoenaed with the same glee as Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro? Has anyone thrown Rep. Clay into the iron maiden to hear who his campaign contributors really are?

If you want young Americans to have someone to look up to again, stop piddling with small fry like Mark McGwire and start hauling some of the lying, cheating, life-threatening politicians and corporate mavericks who are busy living the real American Dream up onto the congressional grill for a few hours, and ask them what sort of example they're setting for America's youth.

I know a certain liar from Texas who could use some more questioning...perhaps even under oath this time.