Admitting you’re wrong when you’ve been foolish is unnecessary
Benign to five
I don’t like to refer to previous Benign to Fives, certainly not unless they’re absolute classics (like my 101 top reasons not to write a listicle or the one where I just wrote ‘‘moving forward’’ 140 times), so I need to apologise for this in advance.
Last week I used my football club as a career analogy. I said they were ‘‘on the verge of missing out on finals for the 11th consecutive year’’ and ‘‘the most consistently disappointing team in the AFL’’.
A few days after I submitted the article they beat West Coast in Perth. Last week they thrashed Greater Western Sydney at the MCG.
They’re in the finals. Oops. There’s a lesson here for all of us. Never admit you’ve said something incorrect and embarrassing in your work life. Or ever.
I’ve only done it here today to make a point. If I was following my own advice, I’d be writing now about my prodigious gift for prediction and how I’ve long said the Melbourne Football Club was a fine organisation simply taking its time to find their way in a complex and competitive world.
Would I be lying? Yes. Would I call it lying? No. I’d call it ‘‘clarifying previous statements’’. Or being ‘‘taken out of context’’. You should too.
And if someone pulls you up on your clarifications, you should shout inanities at them a la basement-dwellers on early 2000s internet message boards.
‘‘Go back and read what I actually said!’’ is a good one.
Being wrong is a form of weakness. Regret is undignified.
Attack a one-person totalitarian regime (or just a tatty modern political party, for that matter. Don’t let what you said yesterday get in the way of what you’re saying today.