Much political hay is being made about President Obama saying that people could keep their current insurance. As thousands find that their current insurance is being cancelled, there is a clamor that Obama lied.
Did he really lie? That is, did he make a statement that he knew with certainty to be untrue? Or did he make a statement that he believed to be true given the information that he had?
Consider that any leader has to rely on the advice and information provided by hundreds of people. If that leader had to verify every piece of information he or she was given, would anything ever get done in government or business?
What Obama and his staff had no control over was all the insurance companies deciding it was not in their best interest to have people keep those older policies. I’ll leave that to historians to figure out who was right or wrong, truthful or deceitful.
Now the shoe is on “the other foot”. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is accused of lying about the deliberate traffic jams caused around Fort Lee by his staff and associates. He had directly asked some of them if they had any involvement in the situation. They all said no.
Christie has worked with some of these people for years and has relied on them for good advice. Should he believe anything differently? If he was suspicious, how much time should he spend finding out more? If he did so, how many other things that he should attend to would be ignored.
If Christie was not actively involved in the traffic jams, he did make the mistake of being gleeful about Fort Lee’s problems. After all, the Democratic mayor did not support him in his reelection.
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” is probably one of the most infamous lie and even damnedest lie ever made by a U.S. President. Bill Clinton later backed off that strong denial, but the Republicans jumped with joy over his predicament. Lots of federal money was spent on this investigation and that investigation and an impeachment.
But the whole mess rings hollow when Republicans have done similar acts and made similar denials. I wish politicians would spend more time on thoughtful evaluation of laws and policies and less on personal attacks. What a way to run a country!
Many have criticized President George W. Bush for a long string of lies about Iraq, for example Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of “weapons of mass destruction”. Now, was he just parroting what his advisors were telling him because of their own agendas or was he directly involved in creating these falsehoods? We may never know.
But I can guess about one misstatement that he made that has become infamous – his advice that in response to the World Trade Center attacks Americans should go shopping. It was a stupid remark, but consider its underlying meaning. The attacks were meant to disrupt the United States. If people went about their ordinary business, then the planners of the attack would have failed in their attempt to disrupt the country. In other words, if we shopped as we normally did, then the country would not have been disrupted as much as planned.
We probably all have experiences of sales people telling us what they think we want to hear, not what we need to know. Sometimes they withhold details; sometimes they really do lie; and sometimes they divert us. How often have you heard, “It’s a standard contract”? In other words, just sign, don’t bother reading it. Do you wonder why we had a mortgage crisis?
My favorite misdirection was decades ago when we bought a TV in a big box store. We told the salesman that we liked a particular model, and he replied that he had one in the back room. Only later did we see that as a ploy to get us to buy on the spot. Of course he had one in the backroom; he may have also had one dozen.
This whole column is a misdirection to write about an irate phone message I had last week. The caller was upset that I had spoken badly about Gannucci’s in my column of January 2. I was flabbergasted! I meant no such thing!
OK, let’s parse what I wrote to find the irritant. Remember that I was writing about going to a plant-based diet and doing my best to stick to it.
“Just my luck that every item on the menu had cheese and/or meat.” Many restaurants have meat, dairy, or eggs in most if not all of their menu choices.
“So I went with a turkey sandwich, figuring that was the leanest meat that I could get.” I thought that was a neutral statement. Maybe I should have said the turkey sandwich was delicious. It was, but is that relevant to that fact that I made a choice?
“The organizers of the monthly social plan to go back in January. I think I better call ahead to Gannucci’s.” If I want to join the group and would like to avoid meat, dairy, and eggs, I should ask the restaurant in advance if they have any alternatives. If not, maybe I’ll have a turkey sandwich again. I am a vegan not because I object to turkeys having their heads cut off but because I don’t like what the turkeys might do to me.
This was also published in the Duluth Reader, 2013-01-16 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/01/16/2766_lies_damn_lies_and_misstatements
