Purifying the Body Politic: Steroids, Rafael Palmeiro, and the Rhetorical Cleansing of Major League Baseball

When President George W. Bush used his 2004 State of the Union address to condemn the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, many reacted with confusion or frustration that a seemingly trivial matter was placed in context with the “war on terror” and a struggling economy. However, these reactions overlook the consistency between the rhetoric that seeks to ban steroids and the broader rhetoric about national community after 9/11. In this essay, I argue that the attempt to purify and inoculate the “body politic” against foreign threats is metaphorically replicated by the attempt to purify the bodies within the national pastime by banning performance-enhancing drugs. Using baseball as a metaphor for the nation, Bush's attention to steroids was later dramatized through the suspension of Rafael Palmeiro. Thus, through the subsequent scapegoating of Palmeiro, the community of sport reproduced the politics of fear and division that have characterized post-9/11 America.