{"id":313,"date":"2008-01-08T01:10:39","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T09:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2008\/01\/roger-clemens-bad-liar-or-just-a-bad-truth-teller"},"modified":"2016-05-25T23:34:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T06:34:29","slug":"roger-clemens-bad-liar-or-just-a-bad-truth-teller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/archive\/2008\/01\/roger-clemens-bad-liar-or-just-a-bad-truth-teller","title":{"rendered":"Roger Clemens: Bad Liar or Just Bad Truth Teller?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Either Roger Clemens is lying about his alleged steroid abuse, or he’s just a really bad truth teller.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite blog posts to write was one I published about Jose Canseco’s 60 Minutes interview two years ago<\/a>, asking readers to try and analyze his microexpressions<\/a> as he told Mike Wallace how many players in Major League Baseball used steroids. The claim — at the time — was largely dismissed by the public, and I’ll admit to not believing a word Canseco said, based on his mannerisms alone. It seemed like an easy call. It turned out not to be.<\/p>\n

Thinking back on that Canseco interview makes watching this whole Roger Clemens drama all the more mystifying to try and figure out. Whether it’s Clemens’ own 60 Minutes interview<\/a> two nights ago or this incredible press conference video below, it’s just so hard to tell how much of anything is the truth:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

One the one hand, he shows telltale signs of lying:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. His mouth wells up with saliva frequently and he swigs water to mask this fact.<\/li>\n
  2. He nods his head “yes” while saying “no”.<\/li>\n
  3. He doesn’t seem natural, completely forthcoming, or at-ease when answering questions.<\/li>\n
  4. He surreptitiously taped a phone call (legal in Texas and New York apparently) to manipulate public opinion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But on the other hand:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. If he *really* ends up voluntarily testifying in front of Congress and\/or a jury at this point, he’d have to be a complete fool to lie about it… which suggests he’s not lying at all (provided he actually goes through with it). But then again, many people think Barry Bonds lied to his grand jury.<\/li>\n
    2. As was proven with Canseco, just because your mannerisms make you “appear” untruthful, it doesn’t mean you are.<\/li>\n
    3. Roger Clemens has no prior offenses before this and it’s essentially only one person who is pointing the finger at him… a guilty person in his own right at that.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      It should be fascinating, albeit somewhat pathetic and depressing, to see how this whole thing pans out. Above anything else, I suppose, it’s nice to hear the guy getting out there and talking instead of hiding behind lawyers. That alone suggests we owe him the benefit of some more investigation before thinking our opinions are even halfway correct or mildly educated, for that matter.<\/p>\n

      UPDATE:<\/strong> Kottke<\/a> points to a New York Times article<\/a> that has now been published which asks the same sorts of body language questions. Interesting that body language experts are apparently only right about “half of the time”… which would imply the profession is essentially useless!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Either Roger Clemens is lying about his alleged steroid abuse, or he’s just a really bad truth teller. One of my favorite blog posts to write was one I published about Jose Canseco’s 60 Minutes interview two years ago, asking readers to try and analyze his microexpressions as he told Mike Wallace how many players […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeindustries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}