Don't Cry for Mark McGwire

Mark McGwire's acknowledgment that he used steroids is no surprise to "anyone with a lick of sense," and the backlash now that he's finally fessed up shouldn't come as a shock, either. "Like all confessions that are motivated by public relations as opposed to, say, police interrogation, this one has many of the hallmarks of phoniness we've come to expect," writes Craig Calcaterra for MSNBC.

What McGwire really thinks of steroid use is academic, because joining the "steroids are bad" chorus was likely a condition of his employment as the Cardinals' hitting coach. The confession "doesn't tell us anything particularly interesting or anything new," Calcaterra writes. "The only really significant question it does raise is whether the legions of writers who have called for McGwire to 'come clean' will now acknowledge that he has come clean or, rather, use this occasion to excoriate him further."
(More Mark McGwire stories.)