Alex Rodriguez might not be on the diamond right now, but he is still appearing on FOX. No it wasn’t a reality show or a guest starring appearence, it was as an example of lying on Fox’s freshman drama Lie To Me. For those that don’t know about Lie To Me, it is basically about a guy who is an expert at detecting deception. He uses his abilities to help people who hire his company. It is based on the story of Paul Ekman, the man behind this brand of science. In the show, the company uses software to compare the video interviews they take in their cases to famous people who we know now were lying. They will show a specific emotion on a character’s face side by side with a person we know was doing the same. For instance, if a person of stature was caught in an affair they show his face side by side with Bill Clinton making the same expression. They sometimes go to commercial with a few of these for effect. That said…

So, A-Rod is a liar. This isn’t news. But you might be interested to know that the picture they used isn’t from the Katie Couric interview where he later admitted that he was lying. That picture is from the big press conference in Tampa during spring training. What’s weird is that they easily could have gone back and taken a picture from a time where we know he was actually lying. To take a shot from that press conference is to basically say that we know he wasn’t telling the truth. While it’s fine to think that as an individual person or to have people at an independent website say that’s their opinion is one thing, for a TV show on a network with an MLB contract (that includes many Yankee games) to use that as a sample lie is another.

Some might actually remember this article, which was in the New York Times about Paul Ekman analyzing the Katie Couric interview and showing the signs A-Rod was lying. ESPN even had this on their front page as pointed out by the website tvbythenumbers.com a few months ago.

Will anything come of this? I don’t think so. But I do think that it is interesting that A-Rod’s image is now so bad that he is lumped into the people they use on Lie To Me to illustrate the biggest liars in America. The guy on the other side of the character is former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey. Has A-Rod really reached the pantheon level of liars in society?

Fox seems to think so.

Guyinthecorner is a Senior Editor here at spartyandfriends.com. He writes the NBA section, X-Games section, and contributes to College Basketball and MLB. He doesn’t watch hockey. He’s not sure how to rate Michael Phelps on the scale of athletes not only because he doesn’t directly compete against people, but because he is a fish. He doesn’t understand the hate for the 2002 National Champion Maryland Terrapins and wishes everybody would just shut up by now. He is known for having statistical formulas and might be Bill James or Joe Lunardi depending on who you ask. His identity is as hidden as many times over as the number of internet memes he employs in his comments. He can be reached at gitc@spartyandfriends.com. “GITC” is an acronym for guyinthecorner in case you aren’t that perceptive.

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