RANCHO MIRAGE,
Calif. -- Like most every other newspaper in America, The
Desert Sun had an Oprah headline on Page One last Friday:
"Influential Talk Show Host Chides Author She Had Touted
After Media Frenzy Over His Lies."
That was
the second-biggest line. The lead headline of the paper was: "Mayor
Admits He Lied On Resume."
It seems
that the popular mayor of Rancho Mirage, a member of the town
council for the past 17 years, Alan Seman, had been claiming he
had degrees from both Northwestern in Illinois and New York University.
Good schools. Good liar, too. Seman is 81 years old, so he had
been fooling the folks for a long time. He was, it turns out,
at Northwestern for a week in an Army training program during
World War II, and later had taken some retailing courses at NYU
in 1946 and 1947.
Only in America!
I read somewhere
years ago that 40 percent of the resumes submitted to American
companies had some untruths or exaggerations in them. That didn't
bother me much; one of the great things about this country is
not the opportunity to succeed, but the opportunity to fail and
try again. And if that took some exaggeration, so be it. In other
countries -- England, France and Germany, to name three -- second
chances are rare because the minute countrymen hear your accent,
they know most everything about you and your class, particularly
about where you went to school. You could be tracked and trapped
for life.
Alas, I think
we have gone too far with our can-do attitude. Seman was actually
caught because he always claimed to be an electrical engineer,
and some other engineers around here realized he didn't know what
he was talking about when the subject came up.
"A bad
judgment call," said the mayor. I guess so.
That same
day, an embarrassed Oprah Winfrey said the writer she had been
championing (and making wealthy), James Frey, had "duped"
her in writing what he claimed to be a non-fiction memoir called
"A Million Little Pieces." Frey said he was just learning
from his mistakes. Do I care about that? Not really. Maybe I'm
a little jealous about all the money the guy has made, but I couldn't
do what he did if I tried. A lack of imagination may be what confined
me to non-fiction writing.
I once tried
to write a novel about an American president and a Soviet premier
holding a quickie summit equidistant from their capitals, Washington
and Moscow. The only place that met the criteria was Reykjavik,
Iceland. Two weeks later came the announcement that President
Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev would hold a quickie summit
-- in Reykjavik. I realized that if my imagination was no better
than the guys in the basement of the White House and the Kremlin,
I'd better stick to just the facts, ma'am.
A little
older now and I hope a little wiser, I am no longer amused. Part
of my evolution was spending five years writing a book about Ronald
Reagan, a master of turning facts and issues into emotions, the
godfather of confecting the reality of governance into his old
business, entertainment. On New Year's Eve in Paris this year,
a French friend told me a marvelous story Reagan told her about
coming to France as a young man and seeing customs guards inspecting
lingerie as they unpacked ladies' suitcases. "C'est bon,
n'est-ce pas?" one said, showing young Reagan a lacy black
brassiere.
"Great
story," said I. "But not true."
"How
do you know?" said my friend.
"Because
he was never in France in those days," I answered.
And now with
Reagan's mini-me, George W. Bush, in the White House we are working
on turning casual lying into a casus belli. Why are we in Iraq?
Because we were lied to about Iraq. It's just not funny anymore.
We are on a slippery slope to a brave new world.
Copyright
2006 Universal Press Syndicate
