by John B. Rosenman
Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems there’s a lot more lying these
days, especially when it comes to sex and drugs. When these cheating rascals are caught, they
lie and lie and self-righteously deny.
It gets so after a while we think those who are innocent must be guilty,
too.
Here’s a few who recently
entered the Hall of Shame.
Bob Filner, Mayor of San
Diego, denied groping and worse when it came to over a dozen women, one of them
a great grandmother. Though he resigned,
he not only denied his actions amounted to sexual harassment but said his
resignation was the result of a “lynch mob mentality” because he challenged the
city’s power elite. It’s always someone
else’s fault.
Anthony Weiner resigned
from Congress in 2011 when he was caught sexting his, uh, not-so-private parts on
Twitter to numerous women. He lied and
denied until finally, driven to bay, he was forced to come clean. He promised he wouldn’t do it again and
recently entered the NY City mayoral race, only to be busted a second time. Is Sexting cheating, especially if his wife
stands beside him and swears she loves him? We may sympathize with his sexual addiction, but
Weiner does appear to be a serial liar with a politically crippling problem. One constituent shouted, “How can we trust
you?”
All too often these people
lie about sex. They make me appreciate someone
like General David Petraeus, who promptly admitted his affair and wrote to a
friend, “I screwed up royally.”
As for drugs, Lance
Armstrong is at the top of the list. He
broke my heart. A cancer survivor, he
not only won the Tour de France seven straight times, he established a
foundation that has helped thousands of victims. Ah, but he also lied repeatedly about juicing
and organized a massive team doping scheme. And when some folks told the truth about his
using drugs, he brutally attacked and damaged their lives. After the International Cycling Union
investigated Armstrong, it stripped him of all his titles. Lance’s own foundation dropped his name, and
he lives now in disgrace. His defense of
his lies and drug use? Everyone was
doing it, and he had to do it too in order to win.
Besides cycling, drugs
affect other sports. Juicing has rendered
performances and new records in sports such as track and baseball increasingly
suspect. Mark McGwire. Sammy Sosa.
Barry Bonds. Are Maris’ 61 home
runs or Bonds’s 73 home runs the true record? Of
course, Bonds denies he juiced.
Then we have Alex Rodriguez, denying it for the second
time after he'd been caught dead to rights before. Rafael Palmeiro. Ryan Braun.
They all denied any use of PEDs and swore they were as pure as driven
snow. I keep thinking of Pinocchio,
whose nose grew a little every time he told a lie. If that happened to these guys, their noses
would reach the moon.
Some folks may say we’ve
always had lecherous men and women who take advantage of their power, and that
today’s media just call it to our attention more readily and in a more
spectacular fashion. I guess that’s
true. Before TV, the Internet, Twitter,
Google, etc., guys like Filner and Weiner could do their thing in comparative
secrecy and not be "forced" to lie about it so much. Now there’s a good chance their vulgar antics will go viral and be replayed endlessly on CNN.
As for baseball and other sports, well, they just didn’t have PEDs a few
decades ago. If they had, those sports
would be as dirty as they are now.
Maybe so, but I still think we as a
society have deteriorated. I believe
Armstrong’s fall from grace, while painful, is justified. Though redemption is possible, Bob Filmer and
Anthony Weiner probably shouldn’t hold office again. A-Rod richly deserves his 211 game suspension,
and Ryan Braun should thank his lucky stars he was given the boot for only 65
games.
As a society, Americans tolerate and
forgive lying and sexually immoral behavior too easily from their spoiled rich heroes who don’t appreciate
their good fortune or their responsibility to be role models. To quote Luke 12:48: “For unto whomsoever much
is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much,
of him they will ask the more.”