The Year of the Liar

From weapons of mass destruction to Jayson Blair, we trusted them -- and they punk'd us. Why do we keep coming back for more?

By Heather Havrilesky

Dec 22, 2003 | The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. -- H.L. Mencken

At least he didn't win. That was the attitude of "Survivor" fans who tuned in for Sunday's finale to see if one of the most shameless liars ever to appear on television would leave with the million-dollar prize. Jon Dalton -- or "Johnny Fairplay" as he preferred to be called -- did make it to the final three after he hatched an elaborate plan to garner sympathy and gain an advantage over his fellow players. He told a friend that if the show brought him on for a visit, which he knew that it might, he should tell Jon -- in front of the cameras, cast and crew -- that his grandmother had died. The scheme worked; the other players were choked up and conspired to let Jon win the reward challenge. Later, when teammates questioned his loyalty, he was quick to swear to them, on his grandmother's grave, that he was being true to his word. They didn't find out about his lie until the show aired last week.

But on the reunion show, when host Jeff Probst tried to get the other players to express their horror over the lie, no one was taking the bait. In fact, by the end of the hour, outrage and anger at Jon seemed to transform into open admiration. With awe in her voice, one fellow player called Jon's lie "brilliant," another referred to his ability to lie as a "rare talent," while a third, ironically dressed in a Boy Scout's uniform, congratulated him on his powers of deception.

Maybe Jon's talents aren't as rare as they seem. Take a closer look at the headlines this year, and you'll see that lying was all the rage. From the administration's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to the Jayson Blair fiasco, examples of lies and the lying liars who tell them were everywhere even before Al Franken's book sold more than a million copies. Those who thought that corporate cheating would dry up and blow away as the Enron scandal petered out were sadly mistaken -- 2003 brought another round of financial scandals as disconcerting as the last, from investigations into unethical practices at many top mutual funds to allegations of misconduct at Boeing. In entertainment, the deception behind "Joe Millionaire" sparked a competition between networks to see which could tell the biggest, most shocking lie for the amusement of millions. Thus, we were treated to "Boy Meets Boy," the gay dating show on which many of the suitors turned out to be straight, or "The Joe Shmoe Show," a fake reality show created just to get a rise out of one unsuspecting contestant, over and over again.

But maybe nothing signaled a sea change in our attitudes about lying quite like Howard Dean's response to a debate question earlier this month about whether it would be OK for the president to lie to the American people. "I can't think of any circumstances," Dean said, "with the possible exception of some national security matter that would -- if some piece of information were put out that would endanger American lives or circumstances under which people's lives would be in danger or something of that sort." Washington's cherry tree be damned! While it seems obvious that a president can and will at times choose to withhold information that might endanger American lives, the unacceptability of making false statements to the American people should go without saying. Still, the response to Dean's remark was surprisingly muted.

While the urge to deceive others may be an essential facet of human nature, our attitudes toward lying and cheating seem to change as our sociocultural climate and our values shift. In his book "The Cheating Culture," author David Callahan suggests that the individualism and free-market ideals of our culture create conditions in which members of every economic strata of society find themselves tempted to cheat in order to get ahead. But the widespread, whispered acceptance of everything from the long-term use of unemployment benefits to inappropriate tax deductions surely doesn't begin and end with the unfair distribution of wealth in this country. What's perhaps more unsettling than the lies themselves or the conditions that create a culture in which lying is implicitly accepted is the way we treat the liar and how it has evolved over time. Once the obligatory period of shock and indignation is over, high-profile cheats are welcomed back into the fold with open arms, encouraged to tell their stories, in full makeup, while a sympathetic interviewer coos appreciatively. The book deals and the attention don't falter for years; in fact, the greater the heat, the greater the potential payday.

Stephen Glass is still grilled and second-guessed openly, ImClone CEO Sam Waksal is pictured leaving the courthouse, looking pale and fearing his impending stay in prison, President Bush is interrogated about how he can support a war that was so firmly focused on the imminent threat of weapons that seem not to have existed at all. But eventually, these figures are folded back into the realm of the acceptable, as if lying is not only expected but the lies themselves are only relevant for a very short time, and once our interest in those lies (or the prison term) expires, then the liar is returned to the same position in society -- or an even higher position -- than he or she held before.

Is it just because fame -- even if based on notoriety -- is always celebrated? Or do Americans believe so firmly in upward mobility and the virtue of reinvention that we would rather allow the powerful to retain their position than admit to a scenario in which a real loss of money, power or status can occur? Maybe our grip on our own material and circumstantial successes is so fragile that it clouds our ability to take a firm stand against those who deceive and cheat the system, since their fall from grace might signal that our own demise could be next. As our personal sense of responsibility decays, we forgive those whose missteps strike us as utterly human, thereby ensuring that deceit and corruption will prosper while we avert our eyes.

Of course, it helps when our celebrated liars are, well, such good liars; the very same talents that were used to deceive others can be called up to add just the right spin to the crime. A few charmingly self-deprecating asides go a lot further than a convincing apology, and with them soon any memory of the original crime -- now termed a "mistake" or "low period" -- is erased. From Henry Blodget to Henry Kissinger, a myriad of liars invariably find ways to wriggle their way back into the public's embrace, and dwell happily ever after in the spotlight. A key rule for rehabilitating your image seems to be that if it makes a good story, you're already forgiven.

Our inconsistency and lack of principles as a culture becomes apparent upon reviewing some of the year's most memorable spin jobs. Whether deceit was sanctioned by the networks or ignored by the voting public, those who lied this year seemed to have less and less to answer to.

Next Page: What better way to spin your lies than by pretending that your deceptions were just another way of "sticking it to the man"?

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