It was during the Vietnam War that Simon & Garfunkel posed the question, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” The message was as clear as it was powerful: The cynicism wrought by the war, and the civil rights movement, had stripped America of its heroes, the symbols of its innocence and idealism.

But surely it was only a temporary thing, wasn’t it? Surely the times would change for the better, wouldn’t they? Surely America would rediscover its soul and its moral compass. Surely the day would come again when trust was restored and heroes again would walk the land.

It never happened. It just got worse. Over the last 40 years, we have seen a steady erosion of morality and honesty and decency in the public arena. The places where we always have looked to find our role models – sports, entertainment, and politics – have become cesspools of corruption and disgrace.

On Tuesday, we saw a disharmonic convergence of events that had to make even the most diehard sports fan gag. Baseball icon Roger Clemens, Indiana University basketball coach Kelvin Sampson, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell formed a unlikely troika symbolic of what’s wrong in sports – and, by extension, our larger society.

In Washington, D.C., Clemens and his former personal trainer, the ferret-faced Brian McNamee, brought disgrace to the New York Yankee pinstripes to which DiMaggio brought so much glory and dignity.

Testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Clemens denied that McNamee had ever injected him with anything other than vitamin B-12. But McNamee, seated only a few feet away, swore under oath that he had injected Clemens with steroids and human-growth hormone (HGH).

Some of the panel members challenged Clemens. “You’re one of my heroes,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to Clemens, “but it’s hard to believe you.” Others ripped McNamee. “You’re here under oath,” said Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), “and yet we have lie after lie after lie.”

It was only the most recent episode in a drug scandal that began in the late 1990s and was assiduously ignored by baseball commissioner Bud Selig and the big-league owners until, finally, the Barry Bonds case in San Francisco forced them to finally acknowledge the crisis and address it by finally instituting meaningful drug-testing policies and penalties for violations.

But it was too late to resolve the abuses that first came to light when Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa were smashing all of baseball’s hallowed home-run records. As the scandal widened, and more players were implicated, statistics from the era were rendered virtually meaningless. Who was using and who wasn’t? We’ll never really have a definitive answer.

By turning their heads to the scandal, Selig and the owners opened the door for Congress to get involved. This is never a good thing. But since Congress long ago granted baseball a special anti-trust exemption, it has a right to get involved when baseball doesn’t keep its house clean.

Of course, considering the various scandals that have been revealed in Congress during the Bush administration, it’s fair to ask whether Congress has the moral authority to question baseball or any other enterprise. How many Senators or Representatives have been disgraced or compromised by allegations involving lobbyists? To paraphrase Simon & Garfunkel, “Where have you gone, Everett Dirksen, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” (Feel free to substitute the name of your favorite honorable politicians, provided you know or can remember one).

In another part of our nation’s capital, NFL commissioner Goodell told Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has been illegally taping opponents’ defensive signals since he became the team’s head coach in 2000.

Specter said Goodell gave him that information during a one-hour, 40-minute meeting that Specter had requested so Goodell could explain his reasons for destroying tapes and notes from the league’s “Spygate” investigation that erupted in Week 1 of the 2007 season when the New York Jets accused Belichick of taping their defensive signals.

When Belichick admitted the taping, Goodell fined the coach $500,000 and the franchise $250,000. He also took away the team’s first-round pick in the upcoming draft. Afterward, Goodell ordered the tapes and notes destroyed because, he said, he considered the matter closed and didn’t want the information to fall into opponents’ hands.

Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, scoffed at Goodell’s explanation and said he wants to talk to other league officials about what exactly was taped and which games may have been compromised. He also said the league’s anti-trust exemption may be threatened.

“We have a right to have honest football games,” Specter said.

“I have nothing to hide,” said Goodell, sounding almost Clemensesque.

While all this was happening in Washington, the NCAA announced that Indiana would be charged with five major rules violations involving Sampson’s illegal cell-phone conversations with recruits.

This is more or less the same stuff that got him in trouble at Oklahoma, his previous employer, where he was found guilty of making more than 500 illegal contacts with recruits. Despite knowledge of Sampson’s problems at Oklahoma, IU nevertheless hired him to replace Mike Davis before last season.

At the press conference where his hiring was announced, Sampson promised he wouldn’t make the same mistakes at IU that he had at Oklahoma. But he did, and IU stripped him of a $500,000 salary increase – and voluntarily gave up a scholarship — when the new allegations came to light last summer.

Then the NCAA came to Bloomington to conduct its own investigation, and Sampson now stands accused of attempting to cover up the mess by lying to investigators from both IU and the NCAA.

As soon as the NCAA report was released yesterday, Sampson should have either been fired immediately or suspended without pay pending further investigation. Instead, he was allowed to coach the Hoosiers in last night’s homecourt loss to Wisconsin.

Until now, the Hoosiers hadn’t been in trouble with the NCAA since 1960. In 29 seasons under Coach Bob Knight (1971-’01), the Hoosiers became known and respected for running one of the cleanest programs in the nation. Knight’s program was a beacon of integrity, proof that it was possible to compete for national championships while also abiding by the rules and graduating players.

Now, to paraphrase the title of John Feinstein’s best-selling book about Knight’s programs, this is another season on the brink for IU. But we’re not talking about the brink of greatness on the basketball court. We’re talking about the brink of disgrace in the court of public opinion.

But maybe there’s hope.

If there’s one thing that resonates most with Senator Barack Obama’s drive for the Democratic Presidential nomination, it’s his message of hope. He talks passionately about an America that many of us remember, albeit with increasing faintness. He talks about an America that youngsters know only from reading their history books or listening to their parents.

It’s an America that’s internationally loved and respected for its morality, its decency, its compassion, its diversity, and its inherent fairness. It’s an America where leaders and role models care about more than money.

It’s an America where winning isn’t important unless it’s achieved fairly and within the rules.

It’s an America where heroes could be found as close as the dining-room table or as far away as the halls of Congress, the nation’s stadiums and arenas, or the stages and screens of our theaters.

Obama says we can go back to the future. We can only hope and pray that he’s right.