Priorities

I was flipping the channels on the Yankees’ off day and finally settled in with the Tigers and Blue Jays on my free preview of MLB Extra Innings on InDemand.

I could have watched the Royals and Orioles or the Nationals and Braves or the Devil Rays and Twins.

What’s more important than having every baseball game available on television?

If you answered, “Having every game at people’s fingertips is one of the most important issues facing the people of the United States,” then Senator John Kerry thanks you.

Kerry held hearings and called for an FCC investigation on an agreement that would have shown “out-of-market” Major League games only on DirectTV.

The political pressure worked. Major League Baseball struck a last-minute deal to keep its Extra Innings package on cable television.

“We kept talking and pressing until we had a deal that protects the rights of most fans to follow their hometown team,” Kerry said.

Over three million Americans will be homeless this year, 12.5 million children go to bed hungry every night, nearly 50 million people have no access to quality healthcare and the most important thing on the mind of a United States Senator like John Kerry is whether a few people have televised access to a specific baseball game?

Beautiful.

Time Warner, Comcast and Cox are the big winners here. They got a publicly elected Senator to help ramrod through their private multimillion-dollar contract.

If Kerry was honestly interested in the rights and welfare of baseball fans and every other American he would call hearings on: Homelessness, poverty, healthcare, education, malnutrition, racial justice and a thousand more pressing issues.

Of course, Kerry doesn’t have time for any of that with all those baseball games to watch.