Braun and Cosby-what could these two disparate cats possibly have in common? On the surface, absolutely nothing. But stay with me and you'll see the correlation. Ryan Braun, left fielder for the Milwaukee Brewers, was a hypodermic needle away from not only getting banned for 50 games for testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone during last year's playoffs, but his National League MVP award was in serious jeopardy until some slick legal maneuvering on the part of his lawyers exonerated him, and his positive sample was overturned on appeal.
"Exonerated" maybe the wrong term. We wouldn't be here if the person who collected the sample did what he was supposed to do and take it directly to a FedEx office. Instead, he kept the sample in his house over the weekend, breaking the all-important chain of custody rule that is tantamount to the integrity of the entire process. Regardless of whether or not it is possible to tamper with a sealed sample (it's virtually impossible) is besides the point. There is also the faulty logic on the part of the sample collector that it didn't matter whether or not the sample was sent or kept in the collector's home because it would not have been shipped by FedEx until Monday morning due to the hour in which it was collected, a Friday evening when he alleged that he thought at that time of night all FedEx offices were closed.
None of that matters, because once you break the chain of custody, the results of the sample are voided. That is how Braun managed to weasel out of this shitstorm. If it stopped there it would have blown over with nary a peep of national scrutiny. But it got worse because he decided to "speak out and set the record straight". Only he didn't. He just made it worse.
Braun went on to hold one of the most arrogant, self-aggrandizing press conferences I've ever seen. He called the media to hold court over a whole slew of issues like questioning the integrity of the collector who his camp has vaguely accused of tampering with the sample and the "fact" that there is no way he could have been on a steroid regimen because he never bulked up. It all added up to Braun taking umbrage at having his integrity and character questioned, since he's such a nice guy and has done for much for the game. We've heard this type of self-serving crap before, but the science tells another story.
Ryan Braun failed two tests. The first one was for an elevated testosterone/epitestosterone ratio. In healthy adult males the normal ratio is usually 1:1. A ratio of 4:1 or over trips the test. Rumor has it Braun's ratio was closer to 20:1. That is a huge disparity. The second test he failed was the carbon isotope test, which examines whether the testosterone is natural or synthetic. Even if the testosterone is synthetic, it still must go through the body's metabolic process, meaning one cannot just spike a sample and it will automatically test positive. One can tell whether the sample was spiked or not because the artificial substance would not have gone through the individual's system.
What does this have to do with Bill Cosby? Cosby's been famous these last few years not for his comedy, Fat Albert or his ridiculously bad dancing, but for taking the "personal responsibility" cake and throwing it at the black community, whom he faults for gratuitous breeding, lack of education, and overall family dysfunction. Well well, Bill. How he morphed from a black guy from Philadelphia to a crotchety old white man from the South is as remarkable a transformation as the one by Michael Jackson, who went from a good-looking black kid into an old, disgustingly disfigured white woman with dark blue hair and a nose that shrunk right into his skull.
"Dollar" Bill Cosby, while on his tirade of righteousness, conveniently forgot to regale us about the skeletons in his own closet. He was the victim of an extortion attempt to the tune of $40 million dollars by one of the kids he had out of wedlock, a child he never publicly acknowledged as being his. She got busted and spent time in jail, an obvious mental case who we can only assume was missing a strong male figure in her life, if only to hand her Jello Pudding Pops while she did her homework.
It's true he paid for her education, but decided it wouldn't be good for his image as "America's Favorite Dad" during his run as Señor Huxtable on that jive-ass sit-com that made him so much money in the 1980's, to have the world know that he was a philandering fucker, no better than any of the inner city losers he currently loves berating.
He also settled out of court in late 2006 a little situation where he was accused of drugging a woman and raping her in 2004. The suit alleges that there are thirteen (count 'em-THIRTEEN) others he has allegedly assaulted in the same fashion. Some of them wound up becoming girlfriends even after the assaults took place, and some of the incidents date back to the 1980's (can you say "Statute of Limitations"?), much to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife Camille. His salacious MO amounts to putting something in the unsuspecting woman's drink and then proceeding to sexually assault them when they pass out. Funny, even the biggest ghetto pimp doesn't resort to this type of hooliganism to catch his hoes. Maybe instead of being a rapist, Cosby could learn a thing or two from the very cats he spends so much time lambasting. Here's a little taste of the shenanigans from the hypocritical "House of Cosby"-
"The allegations came out after Cosby settled out of court last month a civil lawsuit charging him with sexual assault and drugging a woman in Philadelphia in 2004.
The trial had 13 witnesses lined up, listed as “Jane Does,” who stood ready to testify of similar experiences with the comic.
Barbara Bowman and Beth Ferrier were two of the 13, and both were interviewed and pictured in the People story. The two were represented by JF Images when they were introduced to Cosby in the ’80s. (Neither woman had come forward before, and they do not stand to profit from the allegations as the statute of limitations has expired, according to People.)
Bowman, who is married and now lives in a Phoenix suburb, was 18 when she says Farrell arranged to have her meet Cosby at a Denver nightclub, Turn of the Century. People magazine says Farrell then arranged for Bowman to move to New York, where her professional relationship with Cosby continued. Bowman says that in a Reno hotel in 1986, “(Cosby) took my hand and his hand over it, and he masturbated with his hand over my hand.”
She goes on to say that soon she was in a New York townhouse with Cosby, who gave her a glass of red wine. “The next thing I know,” she is quoted, “I’m sick and nauseous and I’m delusional and I’m limp and … I can’t think straight. … And I just came to, and I’m wearing a (men’s) T-shirt that wasn’t mine, and he was in a white robe.”
Ferrier, a single mom who still lives in Denver, says she was introduced to Cosby by Farrell in the mid-’80s. She tells People that Cosby was her mentor, a “father figure” to her, when she drank some cappuccino in his Denver dressing room and blacked out.
“I woke up in my car in the parking lot with my clothes all a mess,” she tells People. “I was definitely drugged. All I had to drink was coffee, and the room was spinning. Then I wake up with my clothes a mess and my bra unhooked. I wondered, I still wonder, ‘What did he do with me? Why was my bra unhooked? What happened?”‘
Ferrier went on to have an “on-and-off” consensual affair with Cosby for several years.
Ryan Braun and Bill Cosby, paragons of virtue in their respective fields. Except they're not. They're both as full of shit as could possibly be. Let's break it down for a second-
Say I'm a young man living in poverty in any inner city in the US. I'm supposed to be harangued on the virtues of personal responsibility from someone who is a serial rapist and aggravated assaulter who has kids out of wedlock that he refuses to publicly acknowledge? Any irony in this, or is it just me? Also, why would Bill Cosby, a man famous the world over with almost unlimited resources, resort to the type of lowbrow predatory behavior that even some of his more unfortunate ghetto brethren would never consider?
As for Ryan Braun, he fucked up the other day by telling the press, instead of keeping his mouth shut like Manny Ramirez and promising to "move forward", that he told his teammates the real story, so anything that anyone in the media says doesn't matter because "they (his teammates) know the real truth". This is the "truth" he defiantly left for others to conjecture about. But that didn't stop him from coming out and defending his character as virtuous and spotless of any transgression against the game he has been obviously cheating for who knows how long.
Steroid use in baseball has changed, it hasn't gone away. No longer are the public going to be hoodwinked into thinking that gaining 35 pounds of muscle during the off-season is legitimate. Steroid use is about, more than anything else, recovery. After a long season of grueling travel, double-headers and the playoffs which practically go into December, it is inevitable that players will still be out there looking for an edge. For Ryan Braun to be so duplicitous and cynical as to think that getting off on a technicality exonerates him from any suspicion is par for the course for spoiled, entitled assholes like he and Bill Cosby.
Don't tell the truth, because it's more important to either settle out of court or sweep the situation under the rug. This is what these two dickheads stand for. Someone please pass me some tranquilizers and a vial of testosterone, I think I want to be just like them.
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