from Amazon
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Why is it that people just can’t tell the truth…
This a non-baseball (tennis) sports post…
As those of you who follow tennis know, Serena Williams lost her semi-final match to Kim Clijsters when she was penalized a point for unsportsmanlike (or unsportswomanlike, I guess) conduct toward a referee.
Apparently, she said this:
“I swear to God I’m [expletive] going to take this [expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat, you hear that? I swear to God.”
And other expletive-laced comments.
The line judge apparently told the head umpire, “She said that she was going to kill me.”
Now, it doesn’t matter much exactly what Serena said because it was clearly grounds for penalizing her, but why can’t people just tell the truth in a controversy? Even if the line judge doesn’t remember exactly what she said, she knows darn well that Serena didn’t say that she was going to kill her. Just once, I would like to see two sides in a controversy have the same freakin’ story. Seriously, why does everyone have to lie, even when it is not necessary? I can’t stand that.
Do people think that in order to garner maximum sympathy for their position, they have to embellish their story or make things up in order to put the other person in the least favorable light? Is that it? If you think you have a legitimate gripe, which the line judge obviously did in this situation, just say what happened!
I was in a very fancy restaurant at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas a few years ago. My friend had asked for some butter for his bread several times, and the bus boy hadn’t brought the butter. The service was very slow and we were all starving. My friend finally said to the bus-boy, “How about that damn butter?”
A few minutes later, the maitre’d came up to our table and said to me, rather indignantly, “Sir, is there a problem?” I said, “Why, what happened?” He said, “The bus-boy said that you said to him, “Where is the effing butter?” I said, first of all, it wasn’t me, it was that guy over there (pointing to my friend across the table - yup I threw him under the bus). And second of all, he said, ‘the damn butter, not the effing butter.”
Again, the bus-boy had a legitimate beef I guess, but he felt it necessary to lie to make his position stronger…