Jayson Blair: Liar, cheater, con artist … and now, life coach

Jayson Blair, apparently praying for another whopper to explain his lyin', cheatin' behavior.

The following infomercial is brought to you by Jayson Blair:

Almost single-handedly, he brought the New York Times to its knees with his feats of fabulous fabrication!… His downfall resulted in the biggest mea culpa in New York Times history… It forever disgraced Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, the tweedledumb and tweedlebumber who ignored the repeated protests from Times staffers that Jayson Blair needed to cease writing for the Times. And to compound the sin and hurt, he turned around and wrote a book about the whole sordid affair called “Burning Down My Master’s House.”

Which is why Jayson Blair wants to be your life coach!

Yup. That’s what he’s doing, according to this AP article by Matthew Barakat. He’s operating in Virginia–interestingly, not far from that den of liars, Washington D.C. Here’s what Blair had to say in his own defense:

“People say, ‘Wait a minute. You’re a life coach?’ That makes no sense,’” says Blair, the ex-journalist best known for foisting plagiarism and fabrications into the pages of The New York Times. “Then they think about my life experiences and what I’ve been through and they say ‘Wait a minute. It does make sense.’”

Writer’s note: No, it doesn’t. But we’ll get to that in a minute. Also coming to his defense: the psychologist who hired him:

“He can relate to patients just beautifully,” said Michael Oberschneider, the psychologist who hired Blair and urged him to become a life coach. “Sometimes you just meet people in life who have these electric personalities. Well, Jayson is now using his talents for good.”

Hmmmm. I guess the line of thinking here goes something like this: Blair, now having tackled his substance abuse difficulties and bipolar condition, is now in the position to help people. Fine. But speaking as a journalist with bipolar who has walked his own rough roads, I remain, shall we say, a tad skeptical about this latest turn in Blair’s colorful life.

And if I had to go into treatment, I’d rather consult Dr. Strangelove than Jayson Blair.

A convincing recovery comes only after one makes amends. Is there even a shred of evidence that Jayson Blair has made amends for any of the horrible things he did as a Times reporter–to his co-workers, his editors or the institution itself? Has he called up a single one to apologize for being a first-class liar, cheat and con artist?

Second: Jayson Blair is a liar. We know this. Once someone has crossed that line as many times as Blair, with as much recklessness, where is the evidence that they can once again be trusted? We know from Oberschneider that Blair has “one of those electric personalities.” Well, so do all sociopaths–and they can revert to their sociopathic ways faster than you can say “Brooklyn Bridge.” Maybe he’s been conned by Blair and doesn’t even know it. Sociopaths are smoooooooth that way. Ask any of Blair’s former Times collegues–I once did–who will tell you, “He was so charming. We had no idea.”

Perhaps it bodes well that Jayson Blair is doing something to help others. But I highly doubt that someone who failed as spectacularly, as horribly and dishonestly as he did has any right to call himself a “life coach”–unless the coaching goes like this: “Do everything the opposite of the way I do it.”

Not “did it,” as in past tense, but “do it.”

For in consenting to be interviewed and publicized, Blair shows that he’s still something of the headline grabber, the attention seeker, self-centered as opposed to a centered self. Twelve step programs, for example, stress that a key component to recovery is anonymity. There’s wisdom in that, and it has a lot to do with the humility of keeping a low profile.

Or else, your supposed recovery becomes something tacky. Like an infomercial.