Last week, three-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones confessed to using sports enhancement drugs during her epic and groundbreaking track and field career, admitting her forceful and steadfast denials of steroid use were, in fact, all lies. This is certainly yet another sad chapter in our African American legacy, and I can’t help but wonder if the news media delights in parading our shame around more than the shame of lying white folk. In the past month alone, we’ve had the return of O.J., Isaiah Thomas’s conviction in a sexual harassment lawsuit, Michael Vick’s heinous animal cruelty, and Barry Bonds—a favorite whipping boy of the press—having an asterisk (??) seemingly permanently tattooed upon his record-breaking 756th home run.
In every case, though, it seems that the bad behavior, in and of itself, really isn’t the problem so much as the lying about it is. Like small children, refusing to admit when they’ve done something wrong, we have grown ups—role models—behaving very badly. And, rather than get out in front and admit that Bonds used “flaxseed oil” back before steroid use was even banned—I mean, there’s no crime here—Bonds seems apparently determined to not only continue stonewalling on the subject but to aggressively and arrogantly compete for the title of world’s most loathed athlete—as crown held firmly by O.J. Simpson.
U.S. President Richard Nixon once said something to the effect that it’s not the crime that gets you in trouble, but lying about it. Attorneys know, once you can prove someone lied about something—anything at all—it opens the gates wide to pin almost anything at all on that person, as juries become convinced a liar is a liar. Once F. Lee Bailey proved Mark Fuhrman lied about using the N-word, the L.A. police detective’s testimony could not be trusted about anything else.
Everybody lies. We’ve all, at one point or another, lied. As a rule, as a course of action in my life, I do not lie. Most church folk don’t believe that, and so tend to accuse me of all manner of ridiculous things. Things they can’t prove and things that are simply not true. Many of these folks tend to transfer their own weaknesses and shameful behavior onto others. I must be a liar because they themselves are liars.
I assume people lie to protect themselves, as if admitting human weakness is something to be ashamed of. The problem with lying, of course, is you have to keep doing it. Like Keebler cookies, you can’t stop with one. Now you have to lie about having told a lie. Even worse, after while, some liars start believing their lie to the point of no longer even realizing they are lying. The lie becomes, to them, the truth.
The worst part, for me, about the Marion Jones thing is that her coming forward, in and of itself, seems to be a lie. She didn’t come forward, she was facing a certain conviction on perjury and other charges. She expresses remorse, but that all seems choreographed for the judge who will sentence her in January. True repentance is about turning from sin, and it is a movement, a motion of the heart. Had Jones come forward out of conscience, there’d be no impending court case. Had she admitted her wrong to be a role model for her children, the admission would have come first and then a call to the authorities.
But Jones’ tearful, emotional plea for forgiveness comes under the pressure of a certain perjury conviction and seems more about demonstrating remorse for the purposes of a lenient sentence than it does about demonstrating actual moral character. Those circumstances cause me to question her sincerity and to wonder, absent the legal pressure, how long it would actually have taken her to finally admit her wrong.
If you’ve ever watched a stubborn child hold his breath, refusing to give in about something, this is the pattern of childish, shamefully immature behavior that seems to be at work, here. Jones’s earlier denials now threaten the medals of her teammates, and her tearful please for our understanding and forgiveness seem terribly orchestrated, the defiant child having finally given up holding her breath, but her actions continue to be mostly about self-interest.
Inching up my prayer list these days is the prayer that we, as a people, would please grow up.
