Left hand never knows what right is injecting
By Beth Teitell
Wednesday, August 3, 2005

``I am sure you will ask how I tested positive for a banned substance. As I look back, I don't have a specific answer to give. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to explain to the arbitrator how the banned substance entered my body''

- Baltimore Orioles slugger Rafael Palmeiro's statement on his suspension for taking steroids.

I can't believe everyone's coming down so hard on Rafael Palmeiro. Who hasn't been the victim of some aggressive substance seeking to secretly enter his body? Why, it happened to me just the other day. One moment I'm following my diet, the next thing I know, I feel a cool substance in my mouth, which testing found to be Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream from Ben & Jerry's! Another time, I was at a bar enjoying a beverage I had every reason to believe was ``juice,'' when, come to find out the next morning, it was actually ``sangria.''

You have to be careful out there, because banned products aren't the only things out to trick you into unintentionally acting against your own best interests. One time I sat down to watch a documentary on the history of the ion, and next thing I knew, a mysterious force had switched the channel to a totally different program, which was later found by an arbitrator to be ``The O.C.'' And then, the very next day, I went through a red light that appeared green to me - well, OK, yellow.

So as you can imagine, it was with great sympathy that I read about Palmeiro's troubles. And Sandy Berger's too. He's the distinguished national security adviser from the Clinton administration who resigned his informal position with the Kerry campaign last year after some highly classified documents from the National Archives jumped into his pants. As if that's not enough, he was forced into the uncomfortable position of pleading guilty to stealing and destroying papers. What's a man to do?

I'm sure that's what Bernie Ebbers, the former WorldCom chief is asking himself. The guy was going along as a highly compensated CEO - literally minding his own business - when, totally unbeknownst to him, a major accounting scandal was unfolding at his very own company. And he's the one who's going to jail for it!

If Karl Rove gets in trouble over the whole Valerie Plame affair, we'll have to add his name to the list of those who've been taken advantage of by, well, themselves. As his lawyer, Robert Luskin, told Newsweek, Rove ``never knowingly disclosed classified information.''

Never knowingly.

I ask you, how can Rove and Palmeiro - or any of us? - be blamed for wrongs we don't know we're committing?