You've perhaps heard of Ryan Lochte now. Lochte is the unfortunate lad who has swum in Michael Phelps' wake for the last 12 years, the world's best swimmer except for the guy setting all the records.
Now Lochte is famous for being an idiot and for sparking an international incident, mostly with his mouth.
Once the story began unraveling and the merda hit the fan, Lochte's PR team went into full Ryan Braun mode.
The Legalistic Non-apology
You've heard the non-apology, non-acceptance of responsibility in which Lochte used the words "apology" and "I accept responsibility" both in his Instagram post and in an interview on national television with Matt Lauer.
Here's his Instagram apology:
"I want to apologize for my behavior last weekend. I'm sorry for not being more careful and candid in how I described the events of that early morning."
That's it. No acknowledgement of what he did, that he lied and embarrassed a nation, that he acted like a drunken moron in someone else's country. ln a statement apologizing for a lack of candor, Lochte lacked candor.
Reading From a Script
For icing on an already sour cake, there's the Lauer interview. (That is, setting aside Lochte's repeated use of the redundant "over-exaggerated".) Lochte attempted a samba in which he appeared contrite and apologetic without ever admitting any of the details of his lie. He even suggested that his bald-faced lie about having a gun at his temple could be a matter of interpretation.
Pressed repeatedly by Lauer to admit the truth, Lochte's PR training kicked in. Looking ever earnest, he simply re-read from the script without ever answering Lauer's questions. He repeatedly claimed to accept responsibility while attempting to evade it. It's understandable, because actually answering the questions would have required Lochte to admit he had lied. On the other hand, a genuine, apology would have humanized him and put a cap on the dramatics.
I knew nothing of, and had no opinion of Lochte. the person, prior to this incident. I have an opinion now: he's a lying, conniving, contemptible, disingenuous jackass, not because he got drunk and destroyed a bathroom, not even because he originally lied about the incident.
Goodbye Cheerios...and Everyone Else
Lochte loses my respect because he hasn't the common decency to stand up and admit what is transparent to the world anyway. He's hiding behind a PR strategy, presumably to save millions in endorsements.
Well, I've got bad news for Ryan and his PR dopes. The cover-up was worse than the crime. He'll lose those endorsements not because he acted like a knucklehead and wove a tall tail afterwards, but because of his lack of candor and refusal to accept responsibility once the story blew up.
I wonder how much he's paying to get really terrible advice.
Admitted liar Ryan Braun made his first public appearance yesterday, serving himself up to reporters while collecting food for needy families in an attempt to whitewash his tattered image. In the wake of his inept non-apology following acceptance of a 65-game suspension for PED use that he had previously denied with self-righteous indignation, Braun's team of lawyers and PR people evidently have devised a new strategy: do nominally good acts and politely decline to discuss the matter in the hopes that reporters will give up asking about it and people will cease to care.
It's a master stroke, because more apologizing, even sincere apologies that acknowledge the breadth and depth of his duplicity and accept total responsibility for it, won't change anyone's mind. Brewer fans will forget Braun's sins as soon as he makes his first appearance in their team's uniform. Like fans everywhere, they care less about morality and ethics than they do about their own desires, and if a former MVP can help them win, that overrides all other considerations.
Don't make that face, Giants fans. You cheered Barry Bonds to the end. Quit chuckling, Florida State followers. You're more concerned that charges against Jameis Winston will affect the Seminoles' championship run than that an innocent young woman might have been raped.
Settle down Baltimorons. You worship Ray Lewis to this day, willfully ignorant that, at the very least, he got away with impeding a double-murder investigation, at worst, he was complicit in the stabbing deaths of two men, and most likely, something in between that warrants punishment and recrimination that he never endured.
For the majority of baseball fans who don't follow Milwaukee's team, the details of Braun's hypocrisy will evaporate to a hazy film and they will forgive him for cheating as they've done for many others. Of course, cheating is the least of Braun's sins.
The rest of us, those paying attention to the cover-up as well as the crime, are deaf to any apologies. Had he not been caught with unassailable proof against him, it is indisputable that Ryan Braun would still be cheating, issuing sanctimonious denials and exploiting his disproportionate power and wealth to crush anyone who might reveal his lies.
To what appears to be his credit, Braun stopped to face reporters at the food drive. "I'm happy to answer your questions," he said. He then spent 15 minutes evading their queries. As a public service, Braindrizzling offers this translated partial transcript of the news conference.
Reporter: Ryan, why did you lie about PEDs?
Braun: As you know, I've been through a lot and as I expressed in my statement...I got into a lot of details at that point and I'm not going to go into further details.
Translation: I'm happy to take your questions but I'm not going to answer them! C'mon, do I look like an idiot? No, in fact I look like a movie star and it doesn't hurt that I'm articulate too. So the good people of Wisconsin will see me politely facing my accusers and won't dwell on the actual verbal content. Yea, me!
Reporter: What do you have to say to the Little Leaguers who really have worshiped the ground you walked on?
Braun: I made a mistake, a huge mistake that's obviously been very difficult to deal with...we all deal with adversity, we all deal with challenges in life and you can take the opportunity to view them as an obstacle or an opportunity to grow from, to learn from and to help others to learn from and that's what I intend to do.
Translation: Little Fucking Leaguers? How about me? I have to endure questions like these from low-life reporters merely for being a scumbag. I'm the victim here! Look at the adversity I have to deal with. Woe is me!
Reporter: In your opinion was the bigger sin using the PEDs or lying about it after the fact?
Braun: As I stated, the goal for me is just being able to move forward. I'm not really going to get into too many specific about what happened except to say I'm extremely remorseful...
Translation: I'm happy to take your questions.
Reporter: Ryan, what was the injury that you referred to in your statement that you took the products for?
Braun: Again, I'm not going to get into specifics and continue to go backward. I'm moving forward...
Translation: My pants are on fire.
Reporter: Don't you think you owe everybody who wants to talk about the specifics and tell us exactly what happened?
Braun: I completely understand and respect where you guys are coming from and that part of your job is to ask those questions but I hope you guys can understand and respect the fact that in an effort to move forward I'm not going to continue to discuss this stuff.
Translation: See, if I keep saying that I won't continue to discuss this stuff people will forget that I never discussed it in the first place and that "this stuff" is cheating my way to an MVP and lying relentlessly for two years to your faces. Do I have the best PR team or what!
Reporter: Ryan, what about the 2011 MVP award? Does this revelation invalidate that award?
Braun: As I said, I'm just going to move forward. I think that's all I can do. I'm not going to go back and discuss things that happened in the past...
Translation: Possession is nine-tenths of the law, suckers! So the trophy is mine as long as I maintain an unbroken chain of custody. In conclusion, I'd like to offer my sincere apology and remorse and also my middle finger to the good people of Milwaukee and all of Major League Baseball and with the help of my vast wealth, my lawyers and my truth spinners, I hope I can outlast everyone's indignation, which I assume will continue unabated for many minutes to come.
