Lies, Liars & And the Lying Liars That Lie About Them


So when was it that we stopped getting mad at people who lie to us? Was there a point on the timeline when a creepy form of national cynicism took hold, and we became so inured toward being lied to, it ceased to be evocative?

I ask this because of tonight's newscrawl, which disclosed that Rep. Paul Ryan admitted that he "misspoke" about his finishing time in a marathon he ran some time ago. My first reaction was that lying about marathon time is this generation's golf score lie, and the previous generation's trout weight lie. The media, of course, had a field day with this: Rep. Ryan admitted to mis-speaking, not lying. Why admit to a lie when you can admit to mis-speaking? It's not like Ryan was seeking absolution for a sin, and had to confess with a pure heart and complete contrition. His press release was for the purpose of containment, which used to have different meaning during the Cold War, a period I find myself yearning for, at least as far as the usage of the word "containment" in politics goes. So he misspoke, and owned up to it. After spouting all manner of blatant lies and corruptions of truth for political gain over the last few weeks, Paul Ryan confessed to a misstatement about the time of his last marathon. We used to call those "puffing," but that's been co-opted by the porn field. Before that we called it "gilding the lily," but that gave way to "putting lipstick on a pig," which had certain misogynistic qualities, and was superseded by "telling a whopper," which again was discouraged by the purveyors of a certain oversized hamburger.

It was a lie. I heard a commentator on Fox News (yes, I have thus far failed in my attempts to figure out how to disable my remote control from access to that channel, much to my chagrin and self-loathing) say that it really doesn't indicate anything about the man or his character. I kept waiting for the talking head to let slip that his phony budget actually does indicate something about the man and his character, but then none of the other indicator of the coming of the Messiah were there, so the other Fox shoe never dropped on that issue.

So again I ask: When did we stop getting mad? When Richard Nixon was unmasked as a filthy and corrupt liar, racist, anti-semite, hijacking our political system out of hubris, when his landslide was already in the bag, the polity got mad. His own party got mad. His defenders ran from him, and he was alone with his lies. What was it about Nixon lying about Watergate, covering it up, and lying about his knowledge, that elicited real anger from Americans, while Iran-Contra, sending cakes to Ayatollahs, and lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq did not? And when Bill Clinton had his dalliance with a libidinous intern, and lied to us, was the anger of men like the House Impeachment Managers real, or feigned? After all, his scolds, like Newt Gingrich, were cut from the same cloth, which I am reliably informed was the type of cloth from which one makes fine lingerie. Newt was outraged, while carrying on himself. DeLay was outraged, while stuffing his pockets with money that landed him in prison. And so on.

Paul Ryan is a liar. He's a pious family man, religious, a protector of the unborn, and a believer in limited government. What he isn't a believer in, is truth. His narrative is false. What's worse, he supports a wider narrative that lambastes President Obama for a lack of private sector experience, while he has never worked in the private sector at all, outside of summer jobs. He furthers a narrative about welfare work requirement waivers that he knows is not true. It isn't a misstatement. It's a lie. He knows it is a lie, and even after it was exposed as a lie by all manner of media, he continued to repeat it, with that boyish gleam and that innocent smirk.

When we're done with prevaricating, lying, misleading, misstating, gilding the lilly, puffery, fibbing, and exaggerating, we now have recourse to a new term for the new millennium, a fit euphemism for containing the damage that should flow from a lie. With a tip of the hat to Senator Al Franken, I now announce the creation of a new word: Disinfocontainment. You heard it here first. And if it doesn't make you angry, you've either not been paying attention, or you've been paying too much attention for too long.