Tamara Holder on Bonds, Sheen, and Other Assorted Headcases

Imus learned many things about Tamara Holder today: she’s an attorney who has worked for Rev. Jesse Jackson and Miramax; she used to be engaged to an NFL player; and, most important to Imus, her uncle is famous cowboy boot maker Paul Bond.
 
“I wonder if he knows the old cowboy—me—has cancer, and would like a pair of boots?” Imus said, wasting no time whatsoever hitting his newfound friend up for a favor.
 
Given her experience in the worlds of sports and entertainment, Imus asked Holder what she thought about the unfolding perjury case against baseball great Barry Bonds, who in 2003 claimed under oath that he never knowingly took steroids. But Holder was concerned with another, less discussed aspect of this case.
 
“There’s a culture within major league sports that the owners—they know what’s going on,” she said. “They drug these guys up.”
 
As with any business owner, Holder noted, the goal of team owners is to make money. “At the end of the day, who goes down but their soldiers?” she said. “These guys are looking at going to prison and losing everything they worked for, while the team makes off with al the money. I think that’s something that needs to be investigated more than the players themselves.”
 
Like Warner Wolf, Holder thinks Bonds was lying when he claimed the injections made into his buttocks were flaxseed oil. “Who does that, even if that’s legal?” she said. Imus joked that he did, so she callously demanded to see his butt.
 
“Just look at his face,” Bernard suggested.
 
In Holder’s estimation, Congress had no business involving itself in drug use in professional sports in the first place. But she added, “If you don’t tell the truth, you are going down, period.”
 
Charlie Sheen, on the other hand, seems irrepressible, and is allegedly in discussions to return to CBS, which fired him just a few weeks ago for essentially acting like a lunatic. Holder observed that since his contract was renegotiated while he was facing felony charges in Vail, CBS must have been aware of his tendency to behave inappropriately.
 
“But at what point did it step over the line?” she wondered. “Was he coming to the studio high? Was he going into the bathroom and doing lines? Was he assaulting people on set? Who knows what was going on where they had to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”
 
As for Holder, that last observation was enough, but only because time ran out—not because she was doing anything illegal or untoward. That we know of.
 
-Julie Kanfer