This past week,

as often before, the news has been loaded with some sort of transgression on the part of a sports figure. Too bad there isn't more emphasis on the cheating of politicians.

The football player is charged with some sort of emotional entanglement. Did that story gain him more coverage by sports writers? By TV cameras? Probably. Did it give him more smarts, more quickness, more strength for all those brilliant plays on the field? Get real.

The cyclist, who had best overall time in 147 days of racing in winning the Tour de France seven times has admitted to some kind of blood enhancement. Did that give him the edge? Apparently he thought so or he would not have expended the time, effort and money to do so. Without it, may he have come in second or third in one of those races? Possibly. Would it have made the difference between being a champion and a complete loser? Again, get real.

We are not very tolerant of cheating, to any degree, in our beloved athletes. Cheating has, however, become routine in politics.

Football coach Vince Lombardi said winning is the only thing. Lombardi meant to always strive for excellence. No one ever believed the great coach meant for his players to cheat.

When I ran a broadcast station, I used to tell our announcers that there is no such thing as an unimportant broadcast. Every time you throw a switch to open your microphone, it is the most important moment in your broadcast career.

When athletes have reached the professional level, it is because they have learned to be prepared, alert, and ready to respond professionally every time a ball is snapped, or thrown, or the starter's gun is fired. We don't like it when they cheat, or behave less than professionally. Not just "doping", we don't want spit balls in hands of a pitcher, or sticky gloves on the hands of a wide receiver. But we give politicians a bye.

On a news program this morning, I watched a top political adviser/consultant/whatever, dance around the answers to every question he was asked. Never directly and truthfully answering, but repeating again and again his favored talking points.

In broadcasting, we used to talk about "lite listeners", people who don't listen carefully to what is said, but believe what they thought they heard.The consultant's answers seem to have been tailored to the lite listener. Rhetoric that sounded plausible on the surface, but actually had no substance.

I kept wishing the interviewer would have said, "Sir, you have given me that response three times. Now would you kindly answer my question?"

As with some athletes, politicians now want to win at all costs. Unlike athletes, however, politicians are permitted to cheat. They endlessly stress some irrelevant incident from their opponent's past, to cast doubt about his/her credibility. Lite listeners eat it up. Newscasters refuse to challenge.

Is it any surprise that our government, at all levels, often seems broken?