Honestly, What Is It With Lying?
The firing of eight U.S. attorneys and congressional attempts to get to the bottom of it were much in the news this week. It all brings back memories for Sunday Morning Nancy Giles.
It's one thing to tell a fib here and there. It's another to tell a whopper when you're in a courtroom. But it's an entirely different thing for Congress to question people whose statements and e-mails don't jibe, and to be told by the President, 'Okay, I'll let you talk to them, but they won't be under oath, and you can't take notes, and it has to be in secret.' Huh?
If there's nothing to hide, why not speak under oath and have a written record of what's said? Call me crazy, but it looks kinda fishy to offer anything less. Even if the truth makes you look bad, once you tell it, it's over. Haven't soap operas taught us that? [Come to think of it, without lies, there would be no soap operas.]
Have I lied in my life? Have I been caught? Yup and you betcha. One of the worst times was in 4th grade, on my way home from school, stopping at Howard's Corner Store like I did every day. But that day I had a mission: A dare from a friend to swipe a package of Funny Bones. My friend got hers quickly and slipped out of the store. I wasn't so lucky. Mrs. Howard stopped me as I was leaving. "What? I didn't do anything," I said. She looked at me. "You come from a nice family. I know your mother."
I burst into tears, gulped that I was so sorry, handed her back the now-squished package of Funny Bones, and ran out, sick to my stomach but relieved that it was over.
Here's what the Attorney General said at a press conference earlier this month:
"I never saw documents," he said. "We never had discussion about where things stood."
Brings back memories:
"I never had sex with that woman," President Bill Clinton said.
"I am not a crook," President Richard Nixon said.
But maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it best: "Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth."