Friday column: Honest doesn’t always mean right

There’s a Buddhist teaching on “right speech” that asks three questions of a statement before it is made:

Is it true?

Is it kind?

Is it necessary?

The questions came to mind as I mulled Andre Agassi’s admissions — admissions used to promote his upcoming book — that he used crystal meth in 1997, lied about it, and got away with it.

The revelations from Open, expected to be released Tuesday, have roiled the usually placid tennis world.

Martina Navratilova compared Agassi to suspected baseball drug cheat Roger Clemens. Roger Federer hammered him, as did Boris Becker.

On the other side, former players including Justin Gimelstob, Jim Courier and Mary Carillo stood by Agassi, with Gimelstob saying, “This will not diminish the way I regard Andre, which is as a person with the highest possible character.”

Which seems to be the rub. Who doesn’t like Agassi, and who doesn’t appreciate his character? His rise-fall-rise story, his sense of vulnerability, the work he’s done with disadvantaged kids through his Las Vegas, Nev., academy all incline me to want to give him a break.

And yet.

As I consider the revelations, I keep wondering, what’s the point? And I’m not alone.

“Why is he saying this now that he has retired?,” asked Rafael Nadal. “It’s a way of damaging the sport that makes no sense.”

It must make sense to Agassi; here are two possibilities:

1) To be crass, it gets attention and sells books.

2) Public confession might be important for Agassi’s psyche. If so, he’s getting a lot of bang for his buck, unloading also about his relationship with his father and the fact that, prematurely bald, we wore hairpieces on the court.

But the key admissions remain the drug use and the lying. The first he describes in somewhat glamorous terms — in spite of the fact that crystal meth is a scourge, a highly addictive drug that causes severe physical and psychological damage. As for the second admission, I can’t see it helping his academy students. What’s the lesson here? Lie well enough and you can beat the rap?

Still, there are those who do not care.

“Andre is and always will be my idol,” Andy Roddick wrote. “I will judge him on how he has treated me and how he has changed the world for (the) better.”

But how do these admissions change the world for the better, Andy?

Let’s go back to the three questions:

Is it true? Apparently.

Is it kind? Not to the game that made him rich. Not, I think, to the kids who look up to him.

Is it necessary? Only if a desire to sell books, a desire for attention, or a compulsion for public confession qualify. In other words, no.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.