Getting Away With Murder - Apologies, Faux Contrition, Sob Stories, And A Sucker Born Every Minute

The Robert Redford movie Quiz Show is based on the scandal and downfall of a noted professor at Columbia, son of a scion of world literature, and legatee of a storied intellectual family history. Charles Van Doren cannot resist the temptation of fame and fortune and agrees to get the answers from the producers of Twenty-One. 

 

A Washington attorney working for a Congressional subcommittee overseeing television, suspects something fishy and pursues Van Doren.  In one scene in which Richard Goodwin is at a poker table with Van Doren and his friends, Goodwin calls Van Doren and says, 'I know you're lying'. 

Van Doren replies, 'Bluffing, Dick.  It's called bluffing'; but Goodwin knows that he has struck a nerve and the usually suave, confident, and charming Van Doren knows he's been found out. 

As the producers of Twenty-One say during the Congressional hearing into the corruption of television quiz shows, 'It's just entertainment, Senator.  We give the public what they want...just like you do'. 

The public doesn't care about erudition, it cares only for the drama - the anxiousness of the contestants, their agonizing over difficult questions, their hesitation, perspiration, and the final right or wrong answer.  Van Doren, from an old New England family of rectitude, strict discipline, honor, and honesty convinces himself that he is not deceiving the public but both entertaining and performing a public service.  Millions of young people who tune in will be encouraged to read and to study. What harm have I done?

Lying of course is as common as sunrise.  Everyone does it, hopes to get away with it, gets caught, apologizes and goes back to deceitful ways.  Lying is endemic among the well-born, the educated, the farm worker, the lap dancer, the lawyer, and every run-of-the-mill married couple. So common is lying that there should be no fuss or bother when the liar is found out.  

Yes, he has deceived his wife, his constituents, his investors, and his congregation, but there is nothing new in that.  America has produced snake oil salesmen, shysters, con men, shell game tricksters, and Ponzi scheme financiers since the founding of the Republic and for years before. 

A few years ago a NBC News Anchor admitted to making up a story about taking enemy fire while in Iraq; but when recently exposed, he said that he had ‘conflated’ his helicopter which did not take fire and the helicopter in front of him which did.  An unfortunate error in judgment for which he apologized. 

Investigation into his reporting on Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans suggested that he made up stories there, too. His reports of suicides that didn’t happen, bodies falling from the top of buildings which never flew, and other distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out inventions had to be scrutinized for ‘veracity’.

The ‘conflation’ issue is inexcusable, said critics for not only does it damage the cause of investigative reporting and honest journalism, it makes a joke of the men and women who do come under enemy fire.   It is scandalous.  That well may be, but 'conflation', outright distortion as it should be known, is very familiar.  The whoppers told at Aunt Tally's Easter dinner table are just as wildly entertaining as the confabulation of public figures. 

The melodrama of John Edwards who had betrayed his dying wife, fathered a child whom he denied, and asked a subordinate to take the fall for him and lied through it all was to some a disgusting spectacle but par for the course for politics. 'Let the buyer beware' is as relevant for the high-and-mighty as it is for used cars. 

Mark Sanford, Senator from North Carolina lied through his teeth about his Argentine lover and to cover up a tryst with her in Buenos Aires told his constituents that he had been hiking on the Appalachian Trail.  Who could not revel in the pure chutzpah, the marvelous inventiveness, and the total absurdity of the claim?

The list is endless. Everyone in power – or so it seems – lies to cover up indiscretions whether financial, marital, or sexual.  The confessional apologies are worse than the escapades, and it is painful to watch dutiful wives and children stand up on the stage with the sinner quietly forgiving and forgetting. 

Lance Armstrong, professional cyclist and winner of seven Tour de France titles - an almost inhuman feat - was accused of doping. There was no way that any man could win two competitions let alone seven.  Armstrong who was doping and had figured out ingenious ways to escape notice, was unshakeable and implacable in his lies.  He was a master at deception who turned legitimate questions into unfair and reasonable accusations. Given the public adulation, the praise of world personalities, and the absolute silence of all his UPS team members, he went on doping and winning for nearly a decade.  

The more he lied, deceived, and distorted the truth, the more he was lionized - how could the press be so arrogantly destructive of a true hero?  The public, as always in need of heroes, simply turned a blind eye, preferring to bask in the glory of a fellow American, refused to look beyond the spotlight. 

Of course, Armstrong was a genius at equivocation. One observer remarked on Armstrong’s ability to tell bare-faced lies without a trace of nervousness, shifty eyes, or uncomfortable rambling.  Each and every time he was asked about doping, he looked his accuser in the eyes and replied with an unequivocal, unhesitating, and viciously stern, “No”.

Bernie Madoff, the shyster, convinced hundreds of Jews, most of him his friends, to invest in his Ponzi scheme, a house of cards of no value whatsoever.  He bilked millions and never looked back.  Once again, it takes two to tango.  There seems to be a credulousness inbred in all of us, especially and unfortunately in Americans. 

Rudy Kurniawan, another master trickster, bilked friends, associates, and wine wannabees out of millions in his fake wine scheme.  P.T. Barnum, circus impresario, said 'A sucker is born every minute' and nothing has ever been more true. 

Of course not only the rich and powerful lie - we all do.  Men cheat on their wives and invent the most outrageously implausible, cockamamie fables. Children rarely tell the truth unless called on the carpet.  Lying is endemic, hardwired, persistent, and permanent. 

Yale Medical School professor Dr. Diane Komp in her book Anatomy of a Lie raises an interesting explanation to the now common phenomenon of lying in America.  Perhaps it is not the lying star figures who influence us, but we who influence them:

I began to wonder about the possibility that my own seemingly harmless white lies had an impact on the world, that maybe, instead of there being a trickle-down effect when people in exalted positions or in public life lie, there is a trickle-up effect," Komp explained in a recent interview. "In other words, maybe the cultural trend in lying begins with those of us who are not in positions of power, rather than the other way around. Maybe the 'trivial' lies that most of us tell without any real pricks on our conscience do matter.

It takes two to tango and liars would not be so bald-faced about their indiscretions if their partners, whether spouses or constituents, were not complicit.  There is something naturally credulous in all of us, some desire to believe that trumps the truth every time.  Working late at the office, that old chestnut of the adulterer, is so obvious, transparent, and ridiculous that no wife should ever believe it;  but believe it they do, give their husbands a free pass, value longevity and sunken costs more than the inconvenient truth, and welcome their men home for a late dinner. 

Everybody does it.  Children fib, doctors hedge the truth, beauticians crow over the genius of their makeovers of ugly women, old friends overlook sags, hollows, bulges, and lines and tell us how great we look.  What is the point of the truth, we reason, when it can hurt others? 

Nothing beats Bill Clinton’s defense of his affair with Monica Lewinsky before Congress. Bill Clinton’s parsing of language to deflect the accusation that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky seems to have happened in a far more innocent age.  The President obviously knew that what he did was wrong; and he had moral compunctions about the act itself, the deception of his wife, and the betrayal of the trust of the American people.  So in his testimony before the Grand Jury, he said:

It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.

 

Of course this endemic lying is viral.  Once it gains universal acceptance, it it hard to stop and it becomes the new norm.  And in this day of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality hasn't reality undergone an existential change?  Who can possibly distinguish between a real photo and an engineered one? And isn't that the point of virtuality, undermining the concept of reality and replacing it with one of imagination? Why live in a bricks and mortar environment when the fabulous, imagined, virtual world beckons?

Donald Trump, master showman, has made a fuss over 'fake news', but he knows that all news reporting is fake, i.e. filtered through a very subjective editorial sieve.  Two channels on a gym's bank of televisions report the same news differently. MSNBC, notorious liberal, says 'Trump defies judicial precedent and...', while Fox News reports, 'Donald Trump's corrective judicial reform...'.  Somewhere in between lies not the truth but some semblance of fact. 

The New York Times, The Grey Lady the newspaper or record with All The News That's Fit To Print now goes overboard with a liberal editorial twist to every otherwise non-political item.  'Climate change causes flood disaster in Nepal' the headlines shout while other news outlets cite historical records of periodic avalanches and still others cite China's overbuilding of dams and civil infrastructure high in the Himalayas. 

Ivan's Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov says that without him life would be a bloody bore, three-hundred-sixty-five days of Sunday Mass, rectitude, formality, and right behavior.  'I am a vaudevillian', the Devil says, 'and thank God for me'. 

 

We live in a moralistic, censorious age, so the fol-d-rol over lying should not surprise anyone.  However, given the fact that lying has been part of human history - no, human nature - since the beginning of recorded time, such umbrage seems silly, vain, and self-serving. 

Most Americans enjoy the Donald Trump show because he is the very incarnation of Ivan's Devil - a vaudevillian, a teller of tall tales, a mountebank, and a carny barker all rolled up into one.  How boring life will be once he is gone.