Half-Truths, Selective Memories and White Lies - Grist for Collateral Attack at Trial

Just one week ago, I opined that Alex Rodriguez did the right thing by publicly admitting - albeit belatedly - about his use of performance enhancing drugs back in 2003, and likened it to Michael Phelps's decision to admit his wrongdoing in smoking a certain illicit substance at a party.

Well, it appears that I may have been a bit too quick out of the gate on that one, because as it turns out, A-Rod has failed rather miserably to fully explain his actions. To the contrary, he compounded his public relations image problems at a news conference earlier today by denying that he knew he was taking steroids (which strains credulity to say the least, given that they were apparently the absolute top-of-the-line performace enhancing drugs at the time), and blaming his poor choice to take the banned substances on youth and naivete, when it has already been well-documented that at the time he took the 'roids, he was already a veteran star player and a multimillionaire.

In my view, A-Rod's half-truths and white lies were and are so transparent that his prepared statement at today's press conference has been rightly criticized and mocked. The moral of the story is this: if you're gonna come clean, then go all the way; otherwise, just keep your mouth shut and say nothing. Going half-way with the truth is rarely a viable option, because it leaves you stuck straddling a proverbial barbed-wire fence of lies (i.e., you will be caught in your lies and no one will believe you) - and that will hurt far worse than if you just went over the fence and got a little cut up, or never tried to scale the fence at all.