Not Just Weiner, Politics: Shameless Hubris, Narcissism Prevalent in Sports

On Tuesday, disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner held another press conference after yet another woman revealed that she had engaged in “sexting” escapades with Weiner, who had gone by the online name of “Carlos Danger.” Weiner, who resigned from Congress after he was caught sexting with multiple women and then vowed that had cleaned up his act, brought his humiliated wife, Huma Abedin, to the press conference, where Abedin said she decided to stay in the marriage with Weiner and the couple was going “forward.” Weiner did not drop his mayoral run and does not seem intent on doing so.

Weiner’s brash narcissism and hubris, though, is something that is not limited to the political realm. Sports is often said to be upstream of culture, which is upstream of politics. And in recent years, there have been plenty of examples of sports figures–such as Lance Armstrong, Ryan Braun, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Kobe Bryant–who have been perhaps even more audacious and shameless than Weiner.

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong had denied for years that he had ever doped, as can be seen in these clips.

After intimidating and ruining the lives of innocent witnesses, Armstrong finally confessed to Oprah Winfrey this January that he doped to win every one of his seven Tour de France titles.

In 2007, Alex Rodriguez vehemently denied having ever used steroid on national television.

Two years, later, Rodriguez admitted, during an interview with ESPN, that he had doped after his name was on a list of 104 baseball players who had failed drug tests. Rodriguez is currently tied up in the Biogenesis Clinic scandal, and he may be suspended for 100 games or possibly for life.

Ryan Braun, who in 2012 said he would “bet his life” that the performance-enhancing drug in question did not enter his body, admitted on Monday he had violated baseball’s drug policy and would accept his unpaid suspension for the remainder of the season. He, like Rodriguez, was tied up with the Biogenesis clinic and was presented with evidence that he had used performance-enhancing drugs.

Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and Sammy Sosa famously came before Congress last decade. McGwire took the Fifth while Sosa and Palmeiro denied they had ever used performance-enhancing drugs. In 2010, McGwire confessed that he used steroids in 1998 when he broke Roger Maris’s single-season home run record.

Roger Clemens was so arrogant he almost got convicted of multiple counts of perjury after he volunteered to go before Congress and testify about performance-enhancing drugs when he never even had to do so.

Barry Bonds, whom baseball made into its poster boy for performance-enhancing drug use, once said, “I don’t know BALCO, dude.”

And who could forget Kobe Bryant, who had his wife sit by his side when he addressed a national audience about his marital infidelity while denying that he had raped a 19-year-old woman in a Vail, Colorado hotel room in 2003.

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