Dan Hicks had a great line many years ago, "How can I miss you when you won't go away?" He made a quirky song out of it.
This line always pops into my head when the bombast of world class liars and frauds intrudes too much into my little world. The song has ebbed and flowed in my brain throughout the forty plus years I can remember first hearing it and then immediately thinking of Richard Nixon, and why he would just never go away. Until, finally, he did one late summer in 1974 just go away with a spastic wave before boarding a taxpayer funded helicopter to fly off into obscurity and exile. The awkward wave was almost Napoleonic in its bizarre parting gesture to a nation. The nation had had enough of Dick.
This first month of January in 2013 we have two characters filling the news pages with their tawdry stories of deceit, Lance Armstrong and Manti T'eo. Lance utterly fails all attempts to categorize him as a human being. If you read any of the multitude of articles over the years and the many detailed accounts of the lengths his corporate goons went about attacking and ruining any person who actually spoke the truth you just want this guy to die instantly and disappear from recorded history. Sadly, this will not be the case. Lance just reaches the upper echelon of fakes during this age of money fueled disinformation. Manti T'eo's story, although stupefying and a giant pie in the face to all who cover college football for a living, comes off as a stupid teen prank gone big-time bad for Notre Dame, and Manti T'eo. Of course, this hallmark university of all things college football can mourn a fake girl who died, but not one who committed suicide after getting the brush off from Notre Dame after accusing one of its football players of rape.
Here is a Rick Reilly column
owning his swallowing hook, line and sinker every Lance lie. This could
be the general media template for all upcoming articles of gullibility
and no accountability by members of our illustrious advertising
sponsor-paid press corps. The Daily Coyote
has more journalistic integrity than nearly all the high paid talent working for big media and their advertisers today. No one pays this lady to spin a
yarn a certain way. The photos are honest, not an advertiser's demand.
No rational person in the world should be surprised at these latest liars, just at how many there are these days. Let's be honest, we are still paying off the eight year misadventure called the Iraq War, which was waged on outright lies by the Bush Administration, and whose total cost can never be accurately measured. We have had the nation's key financial advisers fail to tell the truth regarding their casino exploits with credit swaps and mortgage securities bundled together as billion dollar investments not worth a thousand dollars. Major banks and lending institutions lied to their their borrowers repeatedly on what the true cost of the loans they sold would be for a decade. We lived through the 1990s where every baseball game was a fraud, and applauded for every home run until the juice story leaked through the muscled biceps of the armies of players injecting PEDs into their bodies. We have seen the lies at Penn State, and the awful repercussions of those victims, but Penn State certainly seems well enough after a short hiccup in the public consciousness. None in the major media outlets during any of these gargantuan frauds and abuses of power raised a finger to point out the truth, until way after the fact. And wasn't it just yesterday when we saw a different Tiger Woods and John Edwards?
The apologies are not even apologies today, just news cycle spin filled with crocodile tears for the conglomerate media. The charlatans of today are now brands, incorporated piles of legal teams and media consultants. Sad day when people morphed into a brand of advertising piffle. I can't feel sorry for a brand. I feel pity for all those who swallow up whatever soap, fragrance or charity work the brand sells to make itself more powerful.
